Drabbles In The Dark
by goddessa39
Summary: Various Drabbles featuring Harry Potter and others from creapy phoenixes, Grim reapers, OCs, and other magical creatures. Can be updated at any time.
1. Cereal of Chaos I

**DITD**: Cereal of Chaos

**Characters**: Harry (HP), Mandy, Grim, etc (Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy)

Written: 04-18-06  
Edited: 04-11-11

They were trying to watch the television. Harry Potter sat in the middle of a couch in a normal, respectable muggle neighborhood. To his right was Mandy Maxwell, his best friend and occasional mistress. To his left was Grim, the reaper of death who was his friend while sometimes being his servent, serf, and slave. At the moment, Mandy had the remote control.

The channel changed just as a doctor on the television cut into a cranial bone and the loud, whinning beep caused the bones of Grim's jaw to rub together in a sound that told Harry that the living skeleton was smiling.

The channel changed again to a familiar parody. Accodring to Grim, Scary Movie was an 'unrealistic horror made humor' but Harry, personally tended to like this movie.

It was a normal moment, a scene of a regular hang out of the bored children with their ancient companion. Annoyed at a ruckus Dudley was making upstairs in the overly large boy's room, Harry was about to turn his head to ask why exactly they were hanging out at the Dursley's house while Mandy had a dish and a large screen television when they were interrupted.

There was an explosion of feathers and an unfamiliar bird came to in a whirl of wind that would have gotten his aunt to scream years ago. Ever since Petunia's nervous breakdown years back [about a month after Mandy had showed up when they were three, now that he thought about it] she seemed to skip right over anything 'not normal' and pretend it had never happened. Vernon still had the tendency to turn red, purple and then every other color most would never think possible before storming out of the room to get drunk and ignore the horrible 'freaks.'

The large man drank a tad more than he used to.

There was a red bird that had Dudley Dursley's head in his mouth. Harry made a sound in his throat that might have been 'yuck' or 'gross' but conveyed the same feeling of disgust. The poor bird.

A raised eyebrow was the only physical sign he showed off, prefering to keep his thoughts to himself and letting Mandy handle everything. He wasn't exactly her serf or anything, but she was a bad ass and even he could admit her slightly frightening nature to everything. He just stayed out of her way and took care of the three of them his own way. Harry knew that he would have run away from Privet Drive years ago if it wasn't for the Maxwells moving to England, but his aunt insisted he stay, even if she seemed to detest him and everything about him.

Harry knew not to let it bother him though because he had no love for the woman either. It made no sense but he let it stand. It's not like he was abused anymore or anything. He got everything he asked for, and though he had to put up with Piers and Dudley with thier stupidity around the supernatural, it did turn out occasionally entertaining. Besides, he usually stayed with Mandy anyways, the extra room at her house being totally furnished by her parents who were wrapped around each other for him upon her demanding nature.

Years back, right before Grim had become thier friend for eternity, his uncle's sister's dog, Ripper, had died. When Grim showed up to take him, let's just say that Mandy won a limbo contest and leave it at that.

[It had not been that she liked the dog. It was fact that Ripper was hated even by Petunia Dursely nee Evans, but Grim had taken Mandy's chance of poisoning the little mutt.]

Watching the bird fly around and sqwack while still holding Dudley 'hostage,' his thoughts on the red and gold bird were changing from amused to annoyed. Though he hoped it swallowed Dudley, and choked on him killing them both, he couldn't ignore that it had smashed into the television.

Dumb bird should be given to Grim to play with.


	2. Hunger

**DITD: **Hunger

**Characters:** Harry, Ginny, Blaise

* * *

It had begun in Harry's sixth year. Giny and him started a relationship off of feelings from the beginning, dancing to a tune that only they seemed to hear or understand, baffling anyone that might have noticed. They told no one, keeping to themselves as much as they could. Both allowed Ronald and Hermione to have a relationship based in the naive world in which they still saw only black an white. Everyone reamained unaware while the two of them were always on edge, waiting for something to happen.

Harry hadn't said a word after he came to the Burrow, gaunt and tired; the haunted look in his eyes seemed to stay no matter what. Ginevra couldn't explain to her mother or father or brothers how she could sit with him in a silent room, absolutely still, gazes out the window, minds far away in a place only they could see.

Blaise Zabini had caught herself staring at the Boy-Who-had-changed in Potions, any classes she caught herself staring, meals she watched them. She couldn't explaing why thier dance had caughter her attention so. Finally in November when the last leaves dropped off of the Whomping Willow in a clump that Hagrid or Filch would clean up later, Ginevra caught her before she knew the redhead was anywhere near, pulling her through the wall on the way to Potions.

Blaise Zabini had never kissed a girl before and part of her enjoyed it thoroughly. From there, the two of them, Harry and Ginny, had led her into a room on the main floor, hidden inbetween other abandoned rooms. Slowly, they furnished it to thier liking in reds and greens and blacks and greys that fit only them. Silence captured most of thier time together but neither of the three could mind. Talking just wasn't needed much. They understood with touch and eyes and the way they moved.

Still, she watched in awe as they danced, Harry taking the red head in erotic circles around the room, steps so quiet and skin so pale they might have been ghosts or apparitions if she couldn't smell thier scents combined in the room, and feel them when they rocked against her, tempting her to join the dance.

It wasn't until her father died, killed by the dark lord, that she understood. Ginny clung to Harry because he was the only one who could have understood. Harry didn't talk to anyone except the two girls because he was afraid that if he opened his mouth he'd scream and never stop.

Many of the purebloods had a little seer mixed into them generations back and she had found she stuck to them when she found her truest loss. She became Lady Zabini when her parents and uncle had died at the dark lord's hand. Harry had told her once in the quiet rare qhisepers that he was Lord Black as well now, because his godfather knew he would die without children. He had always known his family would have killed him. Blaise shivered at the idea of elf heads on the walls.

Cuddled against each other on a kind bed in a hidden rom, only them could they show themselves and pull off the facades. Only then could they scream and cry and yell and rage. Only then could they sleep, knowing thier dreams there would only be of each other. Knowing they were as safe as they could be.

When it was just the three of them they could pretend for a short while that nothing else but the three of them existed, tortured souls in a unmerciful world full of sheep.

* * *


	3. Sour Corpse

**DITD:** Sour Corpse

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Harry Potter or anything from the actual cannon; all this fun stuff belongs to JK Rowling. These drabbles are mine though.

**Summary:** Drabbles in the world of Harry Potter

**DITD:** Sour Corpse

**Characters:** Snape, Dumbledore

* * *

He stared at the body of Albus Percival Wulvric Brain Dumbledore. Frozen in a look of utter pain, one might have come to the conclusion that the killing curse /_Avada Kedavra_/ was the one to do him in. But Snape had been in the heat of battle through both wars against Voldemort and he knew how the bodies piled up and the looks on the faces of the dead still caused him guilt he refused to admit to. 

There were two candies in the mouth of what he liked to refer to in his mind as 'the body.' Standing in front of him-it, he could make out the yellow sugar candies the headmaster had been so fond of. A third of the candies that were constantly offered and then rejected upon entrance laid in the beard of the old man, body stiff now and the pale color that he found odd considering there was still blood laid unpumped within it.

And the shock that remained plastered on the face of the body forever, he stared; completely still in a seat across from the desk. It would forever be a part of his mind, for the better. The sinister part of Severus Socraties Snape smiles and jumped in glee as sinister as the billowing robes made him out to be in his first class of every year.

He knew the manupulative old coot had never seen it coming. And the portraits of headmasters of old were conveniently elsewhere during the quick death.

He wished he could have seen it.

And he still didn't believe it was the green light of the killing curse.

* * *


	4. Silence

**DITD:** Silence

**Characters:** Harry, Voldemort

* * *

He didn't know where he was when his fever broke and his arm finally healed. He knew it was dark outside thanks to the position of the window. But he saw no moon or star that would tell him where he was. He knew he wasn't alone too. The dungeons housed much room and he had a cell all to his own.

Screams of neighboring prisoners traveled the cells until he was used to it though. What bothered him was that he didn't know if they were real or not, part of his subconscious, his thoughts, or simply visions given faked by Voldemort, or even just dreams. Sometimes Padfoot would come to save him. Every now-and-then it was his friends or his parents. Sometimes it was Moony. Once it had even been the Ferret and he had started laughing uproariously at the ridiculous thought.

Sometimes whoever came to save him were caught, being tortured to death, revealed as Death Eaters, or shoved in with him to face the torture eventually. Often times he saw his parents from the beyond. Sometimes they would all gang up on him and torture him or each other for amusement.

Why wouldn't they understand that he couldn't leave yet? It wasn't time. And if it happened he couldn't be sure he wouldn't be so scared and run off to an otherwise life as a monk or shepard. He'd always liked animals. When he found he was being tortured by a sheep he just stared at it. That was as bad as Ferret coming to save him, maybe worse.

Sometimes he talked to them when he wasn't feeling particularly sane. Dreams were never safe as he could hardly tell the differences between them and visions and reality. But when it came down to it he had no choice. He brought out the one thing that kept him safe at the Dursleys. He became silent, looked dumb.

A year later he was on a battlefield, random bodies everywhere. Tom Marvolo Riddle laughed and mocked him with chicken arms. He couldn't cast of he didn't make words. Harry simply raised his wand and let a green light fly.

He had never been one for words.

* * *


	5. Returned From Lost

**DITD:** Returned from Lost

Crossover with 4400 (which I only have the basics down, and am not really moving with any of the other stuff...)

**Characters:** Harry, brief Dursleys and OCs, etc…

**Harry's POV:**

It was a normal day really. I was four years old, secure in my way of life as the slave in Number Four Privet Drive. My aunt and uncle spared me nothing but the cupboard under the stairs and the oversized clothing that no longer fit Dudley. They acted as if it was some great service they were bestowing upon me, but it was obvious that it would have just been added rags to the trash bin.

My normal day consisted of me being woken up either by the sun coming up during the weekdays or being awoken by Dudley's stomps on the stairs on the weekends. I would be forced to fix breakfast, lunch, and dinner for the Dursleys, only allowed table scraps myself. Since I could walk, the food was expected to be prepared. I learned quickly to do so, else a beating and weeks in the cupboard with no more than a half gallon of water and a large chamber pot for my toilet. That was a normal thing for me really. I would weed the garden, wash the car, dust the entire house every three days, water the yards, weed the garden, practically plant and do everything in the garden (save a few minutes when the sun came up and Aunt Petunia wished to be _seen_ working her plants as her proof that it was her own green thumb),

I was never really part of the family and since the moment I was laid on their doorstep I knew intimately that I would never be part of it.

One might consider four years of age young, but two and a half years raised in that house that was not my home seemed to do things to me. I find it strange now that I ever tried to fit in with them, but I did. Maybe it was the small bit of knowledge that my mother had loved me so my aunt should as well. She was blood related after all. Within a few months I knew that was the closest thing to relations I would ever have with the Dursleys; blood relatives.

School hadn't been much fun, though the time out of the house was used to its full potential. I spent as much time as I could in the library. It seemed that I could read and remember things, page numbers, dates, names, faces, and years all included. I was great at the books, but I couldn't really do anything other than that really. It was the fiction I liked, the tales of a princess and a dragon or even the simple ones of being in another world with powers of the mind like telekinesis and seeing things that were not there. Maybe, internally, I could remember things I shouldn't have been able to, things about wands and some power like magic. The word '_magic'_ after all was far worse than anything else spoken on Privet Drive.

Dudley dared not enter because the librarian. I doubt she would care much for one like me but she would not allow beatings under her nose, especially in her library. The other teachers at the preschool shed no real light on the beatings, and I never saw the nurse. What bruises and scrapes I received, which was an awful lot, disappeared early on, even if they weren't healed. I could see them, but they were not there for anyone else. After another beating from Uncle Vernon for my "_freakishness_," his words, they started staying there. When I was beaten for actually having effects of these beatings, I was beaten more.

I started not to feel the pain.

Any time I had consisted of my chores and surviving the next hampering problem. No food meant I didn't need any. No sleep meant I didn't need any. No friends meant I could learn to only depend on myself, independent and separate from the rest of the world. I wasn't really part of it. If I called the police, I wouldn't even be part of the system. I tried once. The broken bones and nightmarish experiences healed but I never called for help again. I was almost three, the internal warning of calling 911 no longer in my system.

I shouldn't have been healthy, but I was.

I shouldn't have been normal looking, but I was. And the scar on my forehead finally disappeared.

I shouldn't have been alive. But I was.

I never had a birthday, but I knew when it was. And on my fourth birthday, I wrote it in the sand, "**Happy Birthday Harry**." And then there was a flash of light. I don't remember anything after that.

The next thing I know there is this pull inside me that only I know was a great bonding to me, and then I'm standing, my hands grasped with others, at a lake in the Pacific Northwest.

Prophecies got nothing on this! And it changed everything for us, the 4400plus.


	6. Sour Corpse II

**DITD: **Sour Corpse II

**Characters: **Snape

He kept quiet about his own suspiciouns. The current ministry, he doubted, would do anything more then the last. Albus Dumbledore might have been the so called 'Leader of the Light,' but he was always a thorn in the side of the ministry. Garret Karnal had taken over for interim-Minister as things began to get back to normal now that Fudge was in Azkaban and Voldemort was dead.

Snape too doubtedKarnal would be in place for long, as he was as visibly pompous as Fidge had been behind closed doors of the media. Of course, Fudge had been in power for years, and look where it got the British Wizarding World.

In his lab, there were various things spread around organized to a point where he was comfortable. Things only he could have identified lay in safe confines a Potions Master or Mistress felt was part of thier space. The dungeons dusky climate with low lighting or at least torches only the masters could see were catacombs underneath Hogwarts. Severus again melded himself into place with his brewing now thatboth his masters were dead.Those in the art of brewing were unusually perfectionists when it came to the exactart of brewing, and thier space to work was a cleanliness-must. Anything out of place could cause unwanted results.

Severus Snape had been a spy for years, and his eye was keen at spotting things. He wouldn't have lived nearly as long as he had through the war if he hadn't been. And the look on Albus's face, though shocked, was not the horrified look that Lily Potter nee Evans had worn at her own death.

The candies he had tested, the two from his mouth, and many from the untouched bowl had come back negative for any substance. He washed his hands throughly every few minutes, more disgusted at touching spit then the blood that seemed to stain him this late in his too-long life. He tested the candy from his beard, not expecting anything and was unsurprised when nothing turned up odd.

He tossed it into the trash bin with a sigh. Maybe he was just being paranoid about it. With luck the old man was just killed by a random death eater that remained uncaught. But a sound caught his ear and he turned. When the tasted lemon drop hit the bin it made a crack that his instincts made him aware of. Checking the bin he found that the candy had split and the yellow of the candy was slightly disconcerted. Knowing why the color would do such a thing he quickly grabbed a swap and swept up as much of the substance as he could; there wasn't much. His nose told him it had no smell and no color, though there was a taste. But he supposed that whoever killed Albus wanted him to know it.

Tests of the liquid found in the dead man's passion told him simply that the ingredients used were an uncommon mixture of an unknown veritus agent and a half-made poison. Halfmade, the poison would usually do nothing. But after some more testing, he found that whatever was done in the mixing gave it a toxic effect within five minutes and effectively kill the man. First it would give his body a numbness and then quickly follow into a paralysis only affected by the answers he had given, a truth serum resulting in the old man's death.

He had to admire the hardwork. The massive amount of sugar added in made sure the old coot couldn't move.

Whoever killed Albus Dumbledore could have gotten away with anything that the old man had known and no one was the wiser. And the old man was at his killer's mercy, in which none was given.

But he kept quiet, kept his mouth to his self. It would make no difference to anyone. Better a surprise killing curse than a poison sneaked in under the old man's nose. Who could one trust but those willingly let into the Headmasters Office?


	7. Cereal of Chaos II

**DITD**: Ceareal of Chaos II

**Characters**: Harry, Mandy, Grim, Hedwig

Harry Potter was beginning to detest birds. Currently he was watching the colors change on his uncle's face to match the ROYGBIV array as an apparently-trained owl, [though why an owl would be nearby he couldn't fathom,] was sitting on the edge of the mailbox like a perch. It was as if, Harry thought, the bird was waiting to be invited in. Eventuallyt it gave up and flew in through an opened window much to his aunt's shrieked unhappiness. Vernon almost killed it when it decided that it's digestings could be dropped anywhere.

Thankfully for his innocence (_snorts_), Grim had to reap it first when it flew into his eye as a nesting ground. The sound of wings hitting bone was reminescent of 'bats in the belfry' and bells.

Harry located the parchment of green ink. It was farfetched but Harry had been around Grim [and Mandy] long enough that the fevil climbing up from hell for a night on the town would not have seemed so unlikely. Grim took them around to Diagon Alley and its other alternatives that seemed to be the normal equivelant to a mall, looking for what they would need. Fortunately, Grim had a magic unlike anything else, and Mandy was soon a witch with the same type of magic that he possessed flowing through her power-hungry veins.

An amber-eyed owl caught his attention from a dark corner of a local owelry that he found upsetting when he saw she had not been cared for appropriately. Her intelligence intruiged him and the snowy white feathers motioned that she was determined to follow him. The only problem was that, well, he hated birds. They were better than most humans he had to put up with, but he still disliked the flying animals. Of course, that phoenix from a while back had tried to swallow Dudley in a tug-o-war over a crumb of cereal that Eris had developed along with her golden apples.

When Hedwig spent her time poking Dudley, giving his Aunt and Uncle aneurisms, and treating him like an actual friend, he decided that he'd make an exception for the beautiful, white Hedwig. Especially when he found her crapping in Dudley's food, even if she did like to attempt to taim his untamable raven black rag that he was forced to call hair. Not even Grim could find anything to do with it. Fridwilda had even tried as she came to help Mandy in the talent show (in which they swore not to mention anything that had gone on afterwards where they ended up powerpuff girls for an uncountable number of years) because the blonde frightening girl had let loose a smile.

And terrorising anyone that talked badly about him or Mandy seemed to be on the owl's perogative. Hm. Maybe he'd stick with hating birds that were not his Hedwig.

Mandy would just have to learn to live with the level of loyalty Harry developed in her.


	8. Reflection in a Mural

**DITD: **Reflection In a Mural

**Characters: **Harry, Myrtle, Ginny, Vernon, etc…

He can't remember what his mother looks like. He can't remember the curves of her face or the soft gold of her skin as she fed him. He can't remember the particular sound of her humming him to sleep or the sound of her laugh.

He doesn't look in mirrors, ever since people started telling him that he was the spitting image of his father, with his mother's eyes. He used to look in them when he thought his name was "Freak" and he would wonder what it was that made him so different. Save for the scar on his forehead nothing about him was different. But then there were the bruises and cuts from Dudley. He breaks them instead and uses them to piece together a mural of lights, cascading around the cupboard. It breaks his face into pieces, little bits that are only his to claim.

What he does remember is a moving environment, and a thumping noise from behind him. It's the sound of a body hitting the floor and his father giving his last breath.

He doesn't believe in heaven but he thinks it is a nice thought that maybe they are happy again, loving each other and loving him from afar. He hopes they don't watch as he believes that he is a failure of humanity in every nature.

He can remember green eyes and a blinding curse that mesh together, lines blurring and death coming towards him. He remember his mother's scream one small shriek of death that he can't remember her voice like.

He remembers the pain in his forehead and the pain that took his mind and squished it into adulthood, and straight into his cupboard in Surrey. He wont blame Hagrid but he has a deep seeded hate for Dumbledore as Tom did.

He breaks all of his mirrors but the one that Sirius gives him and wonders why. He knows, later, that he was waiting for the shoe to drop and he broke the compact against Vernon's head when the man advanced on him in a fury. He had sufficient claim of self defense and he felt no pity or pain for killing the husband of his mother's sister.

But they came soon and he put on a new face but inside it was just a bunch of broken mirrors that were reflecting what they wanted to see. His true self had become a twisted thing in his mind, a clown in a dark circus of broken down circuits breaking mirrors instead of making them to laugh. He bent them when they watched but all they saw was what they wanted to see.

Dumbledore saw his pawn.

Severus saw James Potter.

Molly saw a boy who needed coddling.

Hermione and Ron saw their friend who was extremely brave and wouldn't die.

Ginny saw a hero.

Fudge saw an enemy.

Tom Riddle saw a rival being Dumbledore's precious protégé.

Mrs. Figg just saw a scuffed boy.

Petunia and Dudley saw a freak, the freak that had killed Vernon. The master of the house was dead, glass in his skull and Harry felt a twisted sense of irony in it. It was Vernon's home after all that had truly taught his self image to mutilate.

The wizarding world saw many things but considered him their personal scapegoat.

The Slytherins that followed Malfoy saw him the victim for them to practice becoming Death Eaters on.

He is taken to Hogwarts for the rest of the summer to 'recuperate from his uncle's death' and he wonders if any of them suspect even an edge of the truth. When the portraits follow him everywhere, the ghosts watching him, the teachers following him… he is hesitant to do anything so he sneaks down to the chamber of secrets in the night. It was crafted as a forum for time. He could spend days down there in the highest snake den and come back to the world that watched him abusingly less than two hours later.

He said hello to Myrtle often and sometimes sent her ash from a fire or a budding rose that didn't need soil to grow. But mostly he gave her little pieces of glass and never asked what she did with them.

Myrtle Callahan built her own mural in the door to her toilet and wondered if Harry would share it with her. When he died in the chamber, he never told her how, he snuck to her toilet to tell her not to tell anyone. They wouldn't know and he had it sorted out.

"In a few years, would you like to be a living being again?" he asked her and she nodded her head. But there was no way really. "I have it sorted out." And with that he took a mate, two ghosts in a school of magic, one feared and one not known.

She wonders, years later, what he has in mind. The mural on the door is filled with bits of mostly fitted glass. She still places pieces there in her ghostly form, and breaks all the mirrors she comes close to, save the one in the chamber entrance.

Harry broke that one years ago when he came back with Ginny.

Ginny Weasley still had two pieces of glass and kept them with her when the legend of Harry Potter was sewn anew, and she grew out of her hero worship.

Ginny Weasley screamed when she saw a ghost. And she looked into the mural piece behind him, where Tom had dragged her secretly when she was eleven years old. Her face looked ashen and cracked and for a second she thought that maybe this was what Harry looked like in his self image.

She buried the two mirror scraps in her wrists two days later, Halloween.

END.


	9. The Culdesac

**DITD:** The Cul-de-sac

**Cannon:** Harry Potter/Ed, Edd, and Eddy

**Characters**: Lee, May, Marie Kanker; Jonny 2x4 and Plank; Jimmy, Ed; Edd; Eddy; Jimmy; Rolf; Nazz; Kevin, Harry…

1-Jimmy

2-Eddy

3-Kevin

4-Harry Potter & the Dursleys

5-Ed & Sara

6-Nazz

7-Edd

8-Jonny 2x4 and Plank

9-Rolf

* * *

Harry James Potter lived on Number Four Privet Dr. Houses 1-9 were occupied on what the kids liked to call "The Culdosak." There was a Trailer Park nearby in which is Uncle Vernon often cursed. He always seemed to not be part of the crowd though, isolated from the ways of civil life. When Edd (Double D) moved into #7 when they were almost four (as just about all of them seemed to be the same age) Harry took it upon himself to watch out for the Eds lest one of Eddy's harebrained schemes cause them early and certain death. Edd had real brains but absolutely no common sense or weight in brawn.

Ed's brawn outweighed anything that might have once been brains. Occasionally something made it out of his messed up mind, but nothing solid stayed very long.

Eddy was so narcistic that Harry dared not leave him to his own devices. He wasn't brawny or brainy. But he was somewhat of a leader, though a bad one. Harry wasn't even sure now that he was nearby that the Eds wouldn't die in one of the scams. How Ed was still alive today was a massive puzzle that only Double D wanted to really know.

Harry's Cousin Dudley Dursley had a hand at bossing and beating up the Culdosak kids fairly often when they were young. That led to a neutral alliance with the Kanker Sisters (Lee, May, and Marie) when it came to that. Harry got along freakishly well with all of them, even the Kankers, and was respected for both living at #4 (a.k.a. "Hell"), respecting others appropriately, and keeping the Eds in line, mostly. The not-Eds paid their respect in at least looking at the scams of Eddy.

When they screwed up the universe, Harry could never really explain how all of his friends got magic like his own and he wasn't aware when the world righted itself. He especially wasn't all that too knowledgeable on why he knew an abundance of previously unknown things about this 'Wizarding World' that had praised him for something he couldn't really remember doing when he was a babe.

But he was sure he would cause a riot. No one around him long enough was safe from change.

From the treehouse the Eds had reclaimed and rebuilt sturdily from Harry's direction, the Boy-Who-Lived could see all of the houses from his spot in the park directly across the way. He'd never understood how the dimensions inside sure as hell didn't match what they were supposed to be, but he wouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth. Harry watched as his charges set up the next idea for a scam while he himself was sucking on a jawbreaker he had stashed while the Eds remained unawares, still surprised that Ed hadn't nosed them out already.

Kevin had handed them out fairly often, but Harry had told him not to give them to the Eds. If he did, the Eds would have no drive and their intentions would dive into dangerous territory.

"Now Ed! Don't drop them there by the stump. You'll drop it on my-Ouch!"

"Ed, pick up those sticks this instant. It is very impolite to litter. If we would all just throw our dreck into the trash pins, the world would be a better place; the trees would be able to breathe much easier."

"Uh huh! The steering wheels have butter toast!" Ed exclaimed before jumping onto the nearby sap-infested stump at the edge of a fence. He got his tongue stuck and it was quite a show as he stretched it out and tried to talk rationally as he had. His gaze flew to the pile currently on a pained Eddy. "Aww. Pickup logs. My turn!" and he jumped on his 'boss's' pile and the 'boss' moaned and groaned.

Harry could see the trailer park slightly and something round fell off a train-like mess and made its way toward the Culdosak. Rolf seemed to not notice as he and Victor (his pet pig) and his goat (Humphrey) all slogged in the mud in some old ritual.

Lines seemed blurry and odd happening fazed no one but the freakishly anormal Dursleys. Harry couldn't help but think that sometimes it was as if he was living in a cartoon.

* * *

On Harry's eleventh birthday, over fifty owls boarded down on a particular area of Surrey. Seven in particular dived down onto the sill of the tree house that Harry had moved into over three years ago. He cooked and ate at one of the multiple houses that welcomed him on the Culdosak; the multiple parents were all just glad he was away from the Dursleys "care". Some place called Hogwarts stood out, as it wasn't offering a place, but saying he had been accepted. He didn't remember giving them any offer of it, and it angered him. If he didn't already know about it he wouldn't have agreed to go at all.

He would have chosen one of the multiple other schools but all of the parents on the Culdosak that got offerings to magical schools wanted them to stay together, and there was no way he'd leave the Eds alone. The Kankers had been thinking of the all-female Beabuxtons, but soon decided not to. "What will we do without the guys to keep us entertained?" as Marie would say.

A few days later, a big burly man with a beard and a big heart showed up to take him to Diagon Alley. He believed to be only taking "wee Harry Potter" but the raven-haired boy in question convinced the nice man to take his muggleborn friends. They took to the magical world mostly well without actual disbelief, but Harry was not so sure how Jonny was going to react later on. He doubted the upper peers would count the piece of wood as his own man.

The trip was relatively uneventful. Olivander couldn't give him the wand he was supposed to (?) and that bothered him a lot because the wand chose the wizard and before that none other should have real knowledge pertaining what belongs with whom. And then the old man had to make him one from straight out odd products that made for a very long list. He had to make two identical to another because the Kanker sisters only fit one wand.

At Gringotts, Nazz apparently had a vault for "the Best Smile Award" she had won years back that none of them had any insight on how it was to be magical. Harry knew of all of his assets though from the universes screwy past, and demanded in long forgotten rights that they were to be handed over, managing to not only befriend the goblins as he wasn't racist, but to pull on their loyalties without meaning to.

The kids could barely get Double D out of the bookstore so Harry gave him a dusty tome on Occlumency and Legillimency to take up his time. Harry's own book load was quite large filled with stuff he thought he'd need.

Nazz, Jimmy, Sara, and the Kanker sisters spent quite a lot of time at Madame Milkins Shop for All Occasions, so Harry took it upon himself to gather a large percentage of the Cul-de-sac's money and buy in bulk most of what they needed; an endless bag of jawbreakers already in his custody to sidetrack Eddy when he needed.

The brooms fascinated Harry and Kevin. It took them almost an hour to actually decide what they wanted there. They couldn't bring them to Hogwarts apparently, but as they had a section of Surrey all to themselves, they saw no harm in flying around there.

It took them over fifty minutes to track Rolf down in an apothecary down in Knockturn Alley. Poor Hagrid was worried about one of his future students. One would think that the love of animals would have brought them together, but they flummoxed the other beyond rational understanding. Sara would have scared off any of the hags that accosted them if the large procession of scary children and a half-giant wasn't enough. But it was too late for the old man Rolf had been yelling at as he had already gotten the barter down anomonaly low.

The news that the death of his parents wasn't accidental had once angered Harry greatly, and now he acted as if it was something he had just learned. The other children silently agreed that some vengeance was due on the Dursleys. No one seemed to stop and explain to them the full facts so that they would understand though, so they depended on Double D's reading to tell them where to look, and Harry's intuition to tell them what they needed to know.

The next few weeks could only be described as massively chaotic around Surrey.

The pets seemed delighted with the band of merry odd children. But only Harry's snowy white owl, Hedwig, were they all found. She seemed to be 'the leader of the pack' of animals so to speak. Rolf's odd goat/pig he had gotten Victor and Humphrey to be he was calling Halfron-they were not very acceptable to one another and because of that, the boy on #9 was having an aggravated time. But he got them on his side with the idea of dirt and food, eventually.

A book on runes soon became a means of light reading for the Boy-Who-Lived in a tree house and markings beneath new paint at the door to the tree house showed that he was using it. The place was kept comfortably clean the temperature was made comfortable. Also, the dimensions were now much bigger, house-size really.

When Harry thought about the odd stuff that seemed to happen around him and why they were happily isolated in numbers 1-9 and at the trailer park, "magic" explained everything perfectly with no other need of thought. It was always how it was and hopefully always would be.

* * *

The last day of their summer was interesting to say the least. No one could sit still, and Eddy was going crazy. Night came with lists being checked over and unsleepy children. They finally decided to camp out in Harry's tree house and told ghosts stories and helped others out. Double D was rethinking his plan for having a rabbit as a pet even though it could change colors. Ed's chicken probably wouldn't last the trip, but at least he was fully happy with his choice. Eddy's black cat he only bought for the Halloween joke. Because cats were fairly self-sufficient, he though he wouldn't need the responsibility. How wrong he was-the cat hated him!

In the morning, the day was filled with breakfasts and last minute packing. The day was going fast and then they were almost late to the train station. Harry pulled out a time turner from his vaults and took them back almost an hour so as to claim room for themselves. Edd wasn't really a rules guy when Harry did something, so he only asked about the time turner itself.

Nazz's dog and Kevin's half-dog seemed to be in love. They weren't exactly different, but Harry was sure that he didn't want to know what they other half was. Double D was fascinated as usual and Kevin was just pleased with his trick-dog.

The Potter Lord took the last cart and stuffed the Eds in before they could do anything outside his watch. There was no way he was letting them out of his sight. Eddy was already speaking as if he had a box full of rats to test his scams with so he could get money to buy jawbreakers. Harry conspicuously tapped his pocket. Edd couldn't realize the others wouldn't face school work as he did, and Harry had gotten professional at driving their minds elsewhere.

A red head by the name of Weasley introduced himself as Ron and he was immediately grossed out by how Ed was eating, despite his own erratic appetite. This was beyond able for the more common human bodies though.

He gasped at Harry's identity so Eddy pushed him out when he got in his personal space and Edd started ranting about the rudeness of these magic users. A girl with bushy brown hair entered and chills made themselves known to Harry. The feud that would ensue between her and Double D was going to become legendary it seemed. At least Edd had an actual life in the middle of the scams. The girl really didn't have anybody. She wasn't comfortable in her own skin.

Neville Longbottom came by; he was a sad boy really, but Harry felt they'd get along well. The portly boy was a pureblood and promised to teach Harry what he should have learned growing up in 'their world' as the Head of his House.

Three to a boat, the Eds went along and Harry boated with Neville and a Slytherin by the name of Alex Moon who was as quiet as himself and somewhat similarly demented, but pureblood and quite uncomfortable in this role. He decided that would have to change.

The first view of the school was intoxicating, but Harry knew it was magic, and not simply the view making them think that, Imperius-like spells taking hold so that they'd return. He was angered again and glad he knew as it wouldn't affect those aware. A blonde boy badmouthing Eddy was treated with harsh yelling from the narcistic boy, and he, along with two somewhat reminiscent of Ed's brain all fell out of their boat.

Eddy soon started badmouthing anything and everything he could and Harry knew he'd have to change that. He couldn't have the narcistic boy corrupting others like that, especially with some of the words they had come up with over the years. Their own special slanguage told the cul-de-sac that Eddy needed to be tempered soon.

The musical hat he knew of and would greet when it was his turn. The old professor by the name of McGonagall stood at the top of the Great Hall. She seemed shocked that the list of first years wasn't in any discernable order-usually it was in ABC order. First years were called up randomly. Jonny was called and he still sat there as his piece of wood was actually called. Harry was amused.

Jonny, Plank, Jimmy, and Ed went to Hufflepuff, though that hat seemed stuck on Ed. Neville, Nazz, Granger, and Weasley went into Gryffindor. Ravenclaw House welcomed Double D, and Rolf. The Kanker sisters were put into Gryffindor as one. Because of his ambition, Eddy was made a snake, and Sara said she looked good in green.

The poor old hat seemed to age before their eyes, withered by the time the last name was called. "Potter, Hadyn James." It was a long sorting, most whispers quiet at least. Harry made sure his conversation was pleasant and helped up the hat's attitude while he could. "Alistor" instructed him to look him up later. And when the hat opened up its mouth almost an hour later it let out a cry and actual tears fell from its gooby cracky eye slits. "Why do you torture me so?" Then it took in a loud long breath and shouted, "Kids from the Culdosak are to go into PRIVATE STUDIES under their Heads of Houses; POINTS SYSTEM is optional for them; CHILDREN FROM THE CULDOSAK are under HARRY'S watch." And then as if nothing happened, the hat shouted "SLYTHERIN!" The hall didn't move or make a sound for some time despite the clapping of the kids from the Culdosak.

When the fourteen kids, and the piece of wood, were moved as one it was only close to the shock that the Boy-Who-Lived was marked in green and silver. The greasy haired professor at the left end of the table literally fainted and the old man in the middle, Harry was becoming to like less and less. It was a good thing he had been studying Occlumency with the rest of them, though Ed didn't really need it, or he would never have know about the dozen separate probes scratching on their shields. His booby-trapped mind latched on and turned all their hair a multiple amount of horrendous colors, in which both the Headmaster and the stone-cold teacher now sported.

Speculations and rumors ran rampant and Harry was becoming severely annoyed. What right did they have to think they knew him?! In the morning he'd write the head of the Auror department and ask for an investigation. The Minister was a real pain in the ass, but he'd had Double D read up on the laws and people themselves. When the schooling was over, Harry wasn't sure he wanted them staying in this bad-ass-backwards place full of corruption. They were practically praying at him as a baby because he survived.

The Culdosak kids claimed a whole wing of the easy-access dungeons and blocked off all sneaky entrances. There was no way they would be spied on. Double D was currently working on a spell to take the tracers and alerts off of their wands, though they didn't need them for everything.

They claimed abandoned classrooms with carious different views to the outside world and turned them into dorms and a system of rooms that would become their home-in-work. While the Kankers worked on elaborate bedrooms to fit each person as they were, Harry worked on his kitchen, as he was the only one who could really cook. Double D started amassing the library. Ed and Eddy started and a multi-purpose room with a pinball machine and ideas for future electronics when Edd got done with his creations.

Nazz, Sara, and Jimmy started on the fourteen bathrooms. It was sort of understood without saying anything that they were there so that Harry could keep an eye on them. The Occlumency lessons were underway but not perfect. They didn't even get to bed until just after midnight. Transfiguring simple mattresses was harder then it looked.

* * *

The first day was bound to be long. Breakfast started with a bang when the Weasley twins pulled some prank on the teachers' table earning them two weeks of detention with Filch. It was well-cooked and homemade but Harry stuck with the basics that weren't laced with a multitude of things.

Ed however was stuffing himself with everything, and when he looked up his eyes were as mixed up as usual and no one needed to be told that the brainless wonder was immune to what he didn't know was there in food.

The first class of the Monday, Transfiguration with the Head of Gryffindor House. It wasn't bad exactly, but an amused session of watching the Granger girl try to correct the Weasley first year was mirrored when Double D tried to help Eddy, and the lout began bad mouthing the whole idea of magic. It was then that Edd had to remind Professor McGonagall that they weren't exactly point-deductible that left her flustered. Harry wasn't sure if he was going to like the class or not.

The second class, Charms with the Ravenclaw Head of House, Flitwick, was pretty much the same. Half of the cul-de-sac burst out laughing when the small professor fell off his stack of books, and many of the feathers burst into flame, but it wasn't life altering.

The third class of the day would have after-effects. The Professor had rushed in like a bat out of hell, literally, with some practiced speech. Questioning "Potter" with problems he shouldn't have known was only the beginning. He acted very unprofessionally and then went to battering him with words.

It was such a pity, for Snape, that he didn't look around into the eyes of the rest of the cul-de-sac and realize that there would be payback. It was a good thing that he couldn't get through Harry's aching shields or the ass would have been warned that what he was doing was VERY wrong.

* * *


	10. Knowing Boy

**DITD:** Knowing Boy

**Characters:** Harry, Lily, James, etc.

Hadyn James Potter was born July 31st at the last minute while his twin brother was born the first minute of August. He was a smart boy from the smart who didn't always cry like his brother did at every inconvenience. He chose instead to watch. The attention quickly strayed from him to his normal brother; his family thought that maybe something might have been wrong.

Halloween night when the boys were a year old a madman attacked their home. Curiosities of magic worked their unknown way and reflected the infamous killing curse back at its caster. Godric's Hollow, falling apart around the two boys, would leave many effects. Cut on his chest as his older brother fell to the dark and dreams of unconsciousness, Jamien Haraldo Potter was thrown on shoulders, and an old man with manipulative and twinkling blue eyes that smelled of lemon drops and verituserum claimed him 'The-Boy-Who-Lived', whatever that meant. Jamien Potter was thought to have destroyed this dark lord and little of anything was spared for the Potter heir, though James Harold Potter didn't really think of him that way.

Hadyn James Potter wasn't abused, but his parents did not really spare feelings for him. He was neglected. It wasn't like he didn't have clothes; it was the little things that stood out. Harry's opinion on even color was never asked. Jamien got what he wanted, when he wanted, how he wanted, and with whom he wanted. There had never really been a twin bond between the two of them, which would later shock the Weasley twins into a brotherly love with Hadyn.

A few years pass by and the neglected son can often be found in the Potter Library or adventuring around the Potter forests where many creatures lay. His parents thought him quiet and an unspoken thought traveled between them. Maybe he wasn't all there. Maybe he was a tad out of where his brother was. Maybe he just didn't care. Maybe he had no magic, so he wasn't interested in things Jamien was. Hadyn Potter learned not to care for Lily and James Potter as they had never cared for him. His own godfather had spirited his twin brother away and left him in the dust too.

But Jamien's godfather, Remus "Moony" Lupin, seemed to have a kind eye for the boy and quickly learned that Harry was not mentally ill or a squib. He would follow his 'cub' from a while away and watch over him when he chose to roam the gates and numerous portraits, greeting animals, ancestors, and house elves alike and being greeted in the curious fondness he gave off. The portraits, he found, were much more cooperative and knowledgeable when Harry asked for something or asked about something that caught his interest.

What Harry never showed or talked of was that he learned to talk to the power that drummed in his veins in a way that had no been done before. The presences that always surrounded him lifted his spirits and sung him to sleep the way his mother and father did to his brother. He was pleased, and he liked to watch the animals' flow of energy, the colors fascinating and the various rhythms lively.

When he turned four, his uncle Moony, as he called him, had taken him to a clan meeting secretly when he got stuck baby sitting. Harry particularly liked the couples that sat poshly on the high thrones and liked to glare and converse heatedly with each other. They meshed in his child mind. He couldn't really explain it though. They liked to sneer at one another and wage battles of will.

He didn't like the battle part of it, but it was amusing.

He knew them only by nicknames. There were elves and vampire elders. There were Were pack leaders and Centaur groups. There were different types of lamia from beautiful snake women, men and children who he often spoke to in their hissing and translated for those who did not understand or were not bonded to snakes. There were even a few Satyrs, though not really in large groups. Satyrs are half man and half goat with some monkey blood. They are quite agile, and like trees despite their land based feet.

The harpies he wasn't fond of at first, as they always talked of stealing him away and eating him. But soon it was just teasing and they liked to tease more then they really ate. Most harpies, he found, ate smaller prey and many greens. Sometimes they would be greeted by a moon women, a giant woman who came out at night to lay eggs. She had a giant human female body but out of the eggs came modern giants and all sorts of other creatures with some part human. Usually they had at least the head of a human, but not always. Often the hatched would disappear into the forest and never be heard from again. He felt sorry for the Moon Woman and called her "Ma'am Moon."

Sometimes gansas, swans with webbed feet and a single talon often flew around her. She told him that they would flock to her in mass droves when it was time for migration and she would chaperone them to the moon until it was time to come back and be normal geese for the spring.

Baphomets were a two headed person, with one head being male and the other female. At first he thought it had to be in the woman's body, but he learned later that it would just be rude to walk around naked in a man's body. They acted like twins and he liked most of them, though sometimes they were quite different. Senka he knew was kind and strict while her brother head Sunko was grouchy. But when it came to decisions, they were clear and together.

He even got to meat a golem once, and Agurine, a lamia, taught him how to make it like himself. Hadyn wrote "EMET" on its forehead and it turned into a replica of himself. It wasn't very smart though and he eventually rubbed the E off of it, letting it fall back into it's clay ball that it came from.

A Nereid is a sea Nymph. There are fifty daughters of Nereus, and sometimes Engina came by. She had shockingly electric blue hair and purple eyes. She was a normal size for a human female, and acted like one. The only main difference was that she had small gills behind her ears, and her feet would shift into a mushy fin when in the water.

Naiades are her cousins that live in small bodies of water like fountains and little diving pools. When you look into blue water and see your reflection, they splash you if they like you. Harry got splashed a lot; it made him aware of how much he was around water, but he didn't dislike it.

Mermaids were half-sisters of neraids, much the same as their own half-sisters. The only real difference was that mermaids always had fins, and never feet. Rarely, a melusine (mermaid with two tails instead of two feet) by the name of Aisilie accompanied some coming from the sea. She was polite but remained quiet, keeping her thoughts to herself.

Once, he even saw a Were that was lower in a pack present a Goose tree to one of the higher Weres. He had to save the lower's hide when the elder was offended. He didn't much like either of them but he told them that the geese represented beauty while the fact that they grew from trees instead of being born or hatched represented that they lived and died like the tree, and when they died their own ashes would help fertilize underneath and possibly grow another sapling. They calmed but he could tell that he alpha was a macho man and didn't really care. He didn't really think he'd last much longer.

Hadyn led an odd life, and much to Moony's shock, but inward role of the eyes, many of the magical creatures that would usually have nothing to do with anyone not of their kind took a liking to the young boy that wanted to know about them and treated them as if they were only kind of different in that they weren't Harry himself.

Taking a liking to the boy, many of the leaders met with him, and they dubbed him Shadyn Greene of the Grey. They had feuded for so long that he seemed to be some miracle super glue, and just stuck all together for him. He was like a bridge between continents. The magical animal kingdom that only passed by word of mouth referred to him as Shadyn Greene of Grey light, formally, and then Shadyn in person.

When he was 4 and 7 months, he came across a clearing he had never seen before. Though he was cautious, his mind knew that this was part of his land, and his curiosity won out. He liked to wander and find new places. When his mind spun out of control and the ground started coming up to him, he knew he should have listened to the caution in him, but it was too late now.

Legend speaks of a boy. Before the Founders and Myrridin and Arthur Pendragon and the round table were around. Before the power of magic was known or harnessed. Before the magical creatures started appearing, there came a legend, a legend about a boy who first spoke "Magic." But then, its just a legend, and many things are just gossip. But then, even the most unlikely things have the slightest hint of truth.

End. Im working on a fic to it. H/G for sure. Not done, it'll be a while.


	11. Cereal of Chaos III

**DITD**: Cereal of Chaos III

**Characters**: Harry, Dumbledore, Fawkes

After the sorting, the headmaster had called him to his office. Grim had already informed him of the man's penchant for manipulating and getting into business he didn't belong in. like placing him with his aunt and uncle who didn't want him in the first place.

So when he walked into the eccentric office and saw a red and gold bird that looked only slightly like another one, his eye twitched, and from the large seat on the other side of the only desk in sight Dumbledore wondered why.

"Good evening Mr. Potter." He said. Harry simply shrugged, not in the mood for formalities.

Ignoring the impoliteness, as he knew Harry would respect him because his relatives mistreated him, according to plan, he went on. "I'm unsure about what to do with you since you didn't exactly get sorted into any of the houses," He had been sorted simply into Independent studies along with Mandy who had wanted to go into Slytherin to beat up Malfoy, "So I think it's best if you go into Gryffindor like-"

"No."

Frowning, "I beg your pardon?"

"No. I'm taking _independent studies_ along with Mandy."

"Ms, Maxwell can go along to Gryffindor with you-"

"No." Before the old man could get further on he barged, not at all in the mood for what he was trying to do. "Ms. Maxwell and I both got into Independent studies. We will not be part of the points system. We are not in any house and will stick with black Hogwarts crests."

He was interrupted when an extremely fragile looking bird that he remembered flew through the window and onto the perch with the phoenix that was already there. His eye twitched, though he almost smirked when Fawkes, the phoenix that he now liked, chased the bird away. He watched the stupid thing fly right into the headmaster, and left the room laughing. Maybe he could get to like birds. He certainly didn't hate two of them.

The next morning he watched from a differently-summoned small table in which he, Mandy, and an invisible Grim sat at, as bowls of cereal attacked a first year redhead from Gryffindor and the annoyingly obnoxious pale blonde in Slytherin. His morning was at least somewhat happy when he found that Dumbledore-the-Manipulative was still scratched up and burned from the annoying cereal phoenix that Fawkes had nearly killed for flaming into his territory.

His own bird flew in with a reply from the goblins at the bank on what he had to do in order to sue Dumbledore. This was going to be a good day. He didn't really want the world but he loved power over the stupid and insolent, like Dudley for instance. Now all he had to do was find Voldewart or whatever so he could strangle him and Grim could chop his soul out. And then if Mandy still wanted to, she could o whatever she wanted with the world.

He didn't care, as long as he was there by her side.


	12. Freefall

**DITD: Freefall**

**Characters: Harry, Ginny, Molly...**

* * *

Once upon a time, he had been asked a question. This might not seem like much but his life had been played out on a chess board that it was such a remarkable thing. He had been wearing a muggle suit, an odd contrast to the rest of the mourning black capes the wizards and witches around him wore. 

It was a funeral, people all around him crying. A red headed woman, a mother of seven, only six now, burst into another round of tears. The water in her tears slicked into her dark dressage and the husband beside her, crying himself, could not settle her any.

Guilt ate away at him.

_The air rushes passed but he knows it is the only way he is free._

They were all sitting in chairs, all but him. They were all crying or trying to experience the funeral like any other. Except him. A black rose was in his hand and he just stood still with the leaves leaving small wet trails across the white of his inner shirt. The sun was up, the clouds only slightly hiding the sun from them all. The trees seemed to darken and they made the man standing there a specter.

Some people from the crowds glared as if he was a Dementor come to suck their happy memories of the precious girl from them. He ignored them, knowing that people like these would never change.

He looks at the box and tries his damndest not to look at her.

_He's flying and his hair that never settles doesn't change. He is made for the air, for flying. He dips lower and lower into the ground until he thinks he will crash._

_He pulls up with a sudden twist and ignores the uneasy thoughts in his stomach. Would it be so bad if he crashed?_

He moves his head finally and looks up at the mourners. They hate him now and it's so illogical but when have they ever cared for him? He was a pawn, a chess piece, a weapon, a thing, and never a human with feelings to all of them.

_If he fell and never got up would anyone care?_

He looks back down and at the dark rose. There are sunflowers around the casket, sun yellow bright and his stomach curls. She hated sunflowers.

_He's fling through a field now, a yellow field and the only thing she is holding are the dead leaves. "Why can't they be something else?" she asks._

He barely moves his hand but the flowers move out of the way and in a dark wood casket he places the black rose so different from the others. He knows its wrong of them but knows that she's-she's in the casket and that is wrong too. Will it ever be right again?

No. Never. He'd never forget her and yet he had not shed a tear ever since they told him she was-

_Falling, falling, falling, and he wonders that if he kept falling, what would happen? Would the Quidditch books call him a floozy because all his flying must have been a fluke if he couldn't pull off a measly Wonskei Feint? Would the heavens cry because their precious Golden Boy had committed a sin? The Wizarding world had completely forgotten that he had killed a man after all._

_But no. They said he had 'Defeated the Dark Lord.' What did that mean?_

They still glare but he walks away, leaving a tombstone and a group of mourners who will never understand.

_Ginevra Molly Weasley_

_Loving Daughter, Sister, Hero_

_1981-1998_

He walks away now with a sigh into the dark, never to be heard from again to these people who don't really know him and will never understand. When he gets to a dark clearing he stops and waits, head in the air and eyes closed, waiting.

And when she gets there she takes his hands, flesh on flesh and he kisses her, a steamy knowing kiss and his hand unconsciously feels for the ring, a large rock sparkling in the moonlight.

'How long has the moon been up?' he wonders.

"I love you Harry Potter."

"I love you Mrs. Ginevra Potter."

And he smiles.

_On a broom too high in the air he lets himself go. The broom he is on has no meaning and from as high as he was he just falls, no power or magic to help him. A satisfied smile is on his face and he knows this is the only freedom in the magical world._

But it isn't the only magic…

END


	13. The Quiet Place

**DITD**: The Quiet Place

**Characters**: Harry, Luna, Ginny, others…

…………………..

The modern world is a loud place, full of bumbling people and the cutting remarks of the trees as metal weapons cut them down for a final time. Sometimes he dislikes the air for it carries around these sounds. He jumps in the air with a broom and flies of against the sunrise. Sometimes when it vibrates on his skin he doesn't need to hear anyone.

Luna knows it is a loud place, full of whispers and people who are followed by images of their true selves. She is a seer but is knowledgeable on the horrible sounds the world makes before it ends. She is so far in the clouds trying to hide that she doesn't bother with the unflinching crowds of people who whisper and gossip bad things about her.

Harry thinks that maybe she has the better side of this hell.

Ginny too has learned the truth of the loud sounds that make up the world but really, all she hears are the unflinching whispers from an old diary of a person she trusted. The person killed Harry's parents and would kill anyone of them given the chance. She can pretend to be normal and ignore the speak of what happened in her first year… but there is a new voice that hasn't always been there. She can't hide from it all of the time and so cannot be alone.

The Potter scion doesn't need Occlumency to hide his secrets. The deepest parts of himself are hidden in a dark part of his mind that sound does not reach and no one knows exists but him. It started in the cupboard where he would daydream and make up facts about a family that might or might not have been true. He would not break would not break for anything and this little black space devoid of sound where he alone lies comfortable in truths and untruths and impossibilities from another world.

This is his quiet place.

He watches in disdain as the wizarding world carves its own horrors and sometimes sees a twitch of magic as it loiters and lets itself fade from the unworthy, all the while cultivating his inner darkness and lightness, his secrets he will not let anyone take a peak at. And sometimes, the sun will shine on Ginny and Luna. Looking at them, he thinks that maybe he can invite them in, into his heart and the secrets where no sound resides, only feelings and thoughts and the raging river of emotion that sound cannot catch.

Maybe he can pull them away from the horror and learn how to know other people. The Dursleys had untaught him love. He couldn't count anyone else alive as worthy, though Hermione and Ron did have a fond space in his heart.

Maybe he could look on the odd seer or red-head suffering a massive betrayal. Maybe he could learn them as he had no other. Maybe he could fall from the sky and hit the ground and not hear the noise…

Maybe…

END.


	14. In A Cook's Kitchen Darkish

**DITD**: _**In A Cook's Kitchen**_

**Summary**: The Dursleys taught him two things: Horror and a hand at cooking. Dark.

**Characters**: Harry, Dursleys

* * *

Number 4 Privet Drive in the town of Surrey was certainly normal. Absolutely no one had secrets. There was nothing peculiar in the area at all. Well, that's what the stuck up ponces liked to believe. A few of the open minded could go along their ways and mind their own business.

But Number 4 on Privet drive was a special case. Many remarked to themselves how the family, the Dursleys, were over-concerned with the normality of things. Mrs. Polkiss at Number 11 knew for a fact that the Dursleys did not watch Disney shows whatsoever.

But the real subject of speculation was their charge, Mrs. Dursleys late sisters's son, one Harry Potter. He was a quiet boy with glasses and eyes that just seemed to pop out of his head and hair that was never combed. Perhaps, some whispered, the Dursley family was on hard times as their young charge never wore anything decent. Such a scoundrel, Mrs. Dursley replied to the neighbors, and not in a good way. "Nothing good will come from such a f-delinquent!" Mrs. Abastone could recall from Number 2. For many nights Mrs. Abastone tried to think about what the woman had been about to call the young boy.

What most had no idea about was the truth of the boy and the truth of what went on inside the Dursley house. No one knew of the neglect and gross indifference to the health of the young charge. There was no knowledge that the dark haired little imp did not even know his name was not 'boy' until he'd gone to kindergarten. Harry Potter was a wizard, and, Petunia knew, one day _they_ would come back for him and take him into a world she could not enter. Mrs. Dursley abhorred her sister and the son of Lily Evans Potter. It was only right, in her own mind, that the boy earn his keep.

* * *

Harry James Potter had lived at Number 4 Privet drive since he was a year and a half. At four years, when he'd gotten old enough to read and understand directions, and pull up a stool, he'd been made to do the dishes and all the cooking. He did the gardening and cleaning, the laundry and the dusting. Harry Potter worked his ass of like a slave since he could understand what was wanted of him. Oh, he'd tried to ask why he was the one made to work and why Dudley Dursley could play and make friends.

Only to get a beating from it. Beatings were not rare over the years.

By six years old, however, young Harry Potter had learned to question everything inside of his head and nothing to the Dursleys. And while the chores were annoying and worked him to death, both Gardening and Cooking caught his attention. They required concentration and skill, something he could advance for his mind to grasp on.

He'd been made to cook gourmet meals for his relatives and their guests while Aunt Petunia took all credit accordingly, grooming herself as a good cook and lovely housewife. Harry's relatives gave him little more than the leftovers off of their plates-which was not much due to the size of the Dursley males. The rare times that Petunia attempted to cook, she might burn the bread and it would earn him some extra meals. She just gave up, blamed him, and told him to get to work.

And by seven years of age, he'd finalized his plans and looked up to his hate and embraced it. He was sure that others had become aware of his unsocial mind and the mere scraps he wore compared to the designer clothes that his cousin took for-granted. The whale of Vernon's son sure got whatever he asked for, going shopping with 'mummy' every weekend under protests, but always bringing something new to brag about to the neighbors. Most of the neighborhood young children had learned to stay away from 'Big D' but that left Harry himself up to attacks at any time.

Harry Potter was seven years old when he'd made up his mind about what he had to do. And then he acted out his plan. He'd long been doing the Dursley's taxes and legal work for them, though he never got a thank you and was always smacked around even if he 'did good', and so he knew his way around the paperwork.

Since he only knew so much about some of the things of his parents, Harry had harvested a few suspicious things from his own little private patch of the garden hidden beneath a little crevice, and served some home-made wine. One night when Dudley was out with his little friend out bullying money and treats from other kids, grapes and other ingredients were thrown together and made. He'd made sure to test the initial try and found it acceptable and far more tasty than that store-bought bull. The moon came up and he'd snuck it in an empty older bottle of wine. And when Vernon served it to himself and his Mrs., a whole new world had exploded in Harry's blackened eyes.

Vernon had no idea, but a complicated array of stimulants, hallucinogens, relaxants, and other things were included in a large dose.

'Boy' stepped up into the room from a corner where he could bolt if he really needed to, and looked at the definitely sloshed woman. "Aunt Petunia," he began and her head slowly turned to her as if she couldn't't quite hold it up. "What was my mom like?" Her face turned read and he recalculated the dosage before reassuring himself that she was fine and had not enough strength in her legs or arms to lift herself up.

"Lily," she hissed like a snake and there was venom beneath her lips, "that fucking school," she spat, and as her words gained strength, everything she had ever thought of her deceased sister spilled from her lips. And any reservations Harry might have had about what he was planning to do left him. The type of woman his Aunt was and the words spilling from her mouth like poison gave him an image of his mother he would both hate and cherish because he doubted he would ever know.

"What wards?" he asked and by the little description she gave he doubted that they would have any effect. Though he admitted readily he knew nothing of them, the fact that they were made from Petunia's love for her nephew was just ridiculous. It also gave him another view, however; it had never really occurred to him that he had been placed here with a purpose to keep him ignorant, but the fact that he had never been checked up on by Social Services was very leery. "Dumbledore," she spat along with "them" gave him a pretty good idea that this was nothing new.

For two hours he asked them things he needed to know, and for those two hours his past was made darker. He was not so hated out of chance, but out of meddling. His hatred accelerated. A rapid buildup within him and he seethed with power. they did not notice how the chairs shook and the glass broke with a crunch only to suddenly fix itself. Harry knew nothing of the affect he was having on his immediate environment other than the rage in his veins that was begging to rip someone or something apart.

Being a very disciplined young boy with hardly any social tendencies, he held the invisible hand inside himself before giving them a small glass of the wine with another herb that would both make them forget the last few hours and put them into a nightmarish sleep until morning.

Harry Potter crawled back into his cupboard with white skin paling from a sort of shock, and the determination to get out of this place. As he fell asleep in the only space that was truly _His_, the power around him erupted and he fell into a deep sleep filled with dreams, dreams of a life he could have had but would no longer. A packet of papers hidden on one of the shelves felt like a gentle-yet-pleasant burn, telling him that he would be free.

* * *

Four weeks later on what the Dursley's did not recall was his birthday, Harry served the morning hot cocoa and an Omelet or two each for his relatives with bacon bits, cheese, salsa, and the occasional spice with a side dish of bacon, pancakes, and fresh fruit. It did not escape his notice of how none of the three Dursleys touched the bowl of sliced-and-slightly-sugared strawberries, apples, pomegranate seeds, hiding the caramelized nuts.

They dug in and ignored him as usual, the tabletop not covered with dishes and silverware collecting a glaze of food spilling from the mouths of all three-though Vernon and Dudley, the pigs. Harry was appalled and disgusted, having sense the use of good eating habits from before he truly understood that his aunt hit him when she was displeased or for any reason at all. He stood back though, gave the dishes a look and turned his back as he went out to his garden.

Harry had read enough of the crime novels to understand the use of evidence, so he was going to get rid of it. The hallucinogens and the _oh-so-innocent_ spore he'd planted in the Pepsi would be digested and burned easily away with the bodies fluids within a few moments. He pulled a fistful of random plants away, feeling a little sorry in a way that all of this work was going to waste. When enough to warrant a little inspection was taken away like from a toddler's hands, Harry pulled out his own little plot of land and placed it in an envelope, and then sealing it and placing it in a thickened folder for safe keeping along with other documents.

Hearing the sound of the water running, he hurries back inside to do the dishes as he is always made to do. Opening the door, Dudley runs by him with a sudden spurt of energy and Vernon stands with an overly large smile on his face. He kisses his wife and makes his way upstairs, passing his son his the toy room, and going on to the bathroom.

Petunia glares at him with a glare that can only come from someone who despises him as if he is a delinquent. His face is as blank as a mask like always so she looks down at the plates. "Well?" she snaps, "Get your damned food and start your chores," she screeches and tosses a three-paged list on the ground. He is expected to pick it up. He does. Harry places it in the sink to become soggy wet, knowing it will disappear in the sink with the trash, and down into the sewers where it will never be found and put together again.

He begins his chore list after breakfast (having known it by heart for years) by cleaning off the dishes and the table. As the last of the food falls down the drain and the rest of the 'spice' becomes nothing, he shuts off the water, closes his eyes and listens. Someone upstairs is breathing hard, and the buttons on a controller click ever slowly. Running upstairs, his feet not making a sound he puts his ear to the door of the toy room and inches the door open. Dudley is laid out on the ground, blinking weakly, a confused and frightened look on his face. Harry feels nothing as the chest of an overweight boy with no love in his heart stops moving; Dudley's lungs have shut down. Really, Dudley's food had just been juiced with some hallucinogens and something to make him go to sleep for a month or three, but he'd just _had_ to have fourths.

He inches out and leaves the door half open as he scoots down the hallway just enough to avoid the smell of shit coming from the bathroom he has had to disinfect daily. There is a choking sound but it is of no part of his doing. Vernon is so heavy that breathing has always been a problem, and when under stress and turning colors it is not a rare thing. There is a sound is if taking in air before a grunt of dead weight (no pun intended) on ceramic. Then it is silent.

Hurrying down to the ground floor, he rushes to the window just to make sure that the blinds are completely shut. He turns. Aunt Petunia is looking at him. She is too far gone to even know what is going on. _Worthless freak_, Harry would have said back if he felt this was pure vengeance. But he dozen't. It is something more. And looking his Aunt who hates him with everything, she dies.

With a smile on his face no one has seen since his parents were alive, he looks up at the ceiling and closes his eyes. He falls to the floor in relief for a moment. It's over, it's over, it's over, he repeats in his head like a happy mantra. His head has been in cotton with stickers finding him for so long. Now he is a hundred feet in the air and flying away.

A cry from upstairs tells him that it's time to get up, and he does so. Quietly as ever, he makes his way upstairs and in twenty seconds is in front of the fifth bedroom that had so long been a storage room. It had been made into a nursery nine months ago when Petunia had discovered she was pregnant.

* * *

Despite her normality, as she liked to call it, Petunia Dursley had gotten lucky, and throughout her pregnancy, she along with .001 percent of expectant mothers had never really shown. She'd been pleased, but then the lights had flickered, and she had feared. Petunia had even snuck off somewhere to get an abortion and, despite all of her paperwork being in order, something else had come up and she had not been able to before she was passed her limit. In a city not too far away they had gone to a little hospital off of the charts and brought her daughter into the world. The neighborhood believed they'd gone on a weekend fling to Paris.

At first, Vernon had wanted to keep his little 'Gilly'. But by the time they had left the hospital and gotten back to the house, it had become apparent that she had the 'freaky powers' that the boy had because the only way she would stop her crying was if she was near Harry. The neighborhood had never known they'd had another child, and Petunia was just as glad to keep it that way. It wasn't a surprise that the girl was never given any attention from her actual blood parents and brother. Harry had taken her into her nursery and taken over her care.

* * *

The trunk his mother had left to him that his aunt had attempted to burn had been found in the back of the storage room, hidden away behind a load of bigger furniture soon after Petunia and Vernon's forgotten interrogation. It had come in handy in a big way. Storing all of the things that were Harry's in any way was handy, as well as the bag of wizarding and muggle money 'just in case.' But Harry found it was most useful because of what his mother called 'your father's stupid cape' which was an invisibility cloak according to one of the letters and the storage more than should have been scientifically and mathematically possible.

Simply giving the girl a bottle and tucking her in, he quickly packed all of the top-notch baby equipment away and brought in an old flex-bed and a nightstand with some other things to make it look like another spare guest room.

Having emptied his Uncle's wallet and his Aunt's purse on the stand downstairs 'just because he could and it would not do them any good', he was fairly pleased with himself. When they had been twenty minutes dead, Harry pressed a button on the trunk, making it the size of a half-dollar coin in American currency, picked up his little sleeping cousin and spread the invisibility cloak around them. And before going out the back door, he pocketed a bottle of cool water and the bowl he'd prepared earlier. He left the Dursley home from the back door and snuck away with the invisibility cloak around him. Tasting some of the delicious strawberries he'd prepared earlier he smiled, successful.

"Happy Birthday to us, Ella Shaylie Potter." And the sleeping babe opened her eyes and looked up at him as if to say, _Yay us, now let me sleep_. But of course, she's just a baby so she could not possibly have actual thoughts.

Disappearing from the neighborhood forever, Harry James Potter held his new little sister close to him and made his way to the train station. Something in his eyes sparked as if building up from the coming storm-intelligence showed raw in his face before fading away beneath the mask he'd long learned to keep in front of him.

* * *

Harry found a bank outside of the train station on the way to a pub called the 'Leaky Cauldron' and decided it would be perfect. Outside, he hid in the bushes where he sat his little sister down for only a second. No one was there so he ran up to the mechanical teller. When the camera stopped up by him he stuck a black sticky note over the camera just in case. Still invisible, Harry inserted the credit cards his relatives would no longer find of use, and pulled out all of the money. Over thirty thousand dollars, though Harry would later question where it came from, and Harry smirked lightly. He doubted anyone his age had carried that much money around unless they were heavy in drugs or something.

Rushing back to his 'sister' with the money pocketed, he stopped in shock for a moment and almost believed that everything was about to come crashing down around him.

_Vipera Berus_, the adder. Though generally not one of the bigger of the snake population, it is poisonous. Also, it is one of the more enduring of the land serpent population. "No," he spoke sharply, though not about to believe he could stop it. Rushing forward, he was just about to do his best to shield his little sister when a head turned towards him suddenly.

"What?" asked a voice in a sort of background hissing, though Harry heard perfect English. Harry shot his head side wise looking at the snake that had gone mostly still.

"You speak English?"

"Of course not you sssstupid human," it said as if he was a pathetic mouse. "You are speaking the great tongue of the sssserpent." it hissed sharply.

"Oh," he said dumbly. "So you're not going to hurt her?" he asked.

"Of course not! I do not eat human." it stated. He felt too relieved to feel stupid.

"Oh. Good." He sighs in relief and clutches the waking bundle to him. The baby does not realize how in danger she just was. "Well," he begins, looking at the snake. "Thanks for not, you know, killing us." He stands, pulling the invisibility cloak around him tightly. "Bye."

He takes four steps away before he hears, "Hey, wait! Where are you going?" Its a little panicked but he thinks nothing of it.

He turns back around anyways. He wont be rude to something that can kill him and was kind enough not to. "Uhm, away," he's not sure what to reply though. "I have to go to some bank run by goblins to find out about my Legacy," and really he has no idea what he's expecting the snake to reply.

"Take me with you!" it screeches, and Harry knows that this is definitely not close to what he'd thought.

"Why?" he asks, truly oblivious.

"I can help you. I know things." the snake hisses almost sweetly.

"What's in it for you?" he asks, his eyes piercing into it and looking for any deception. If wizards could talk to snakes who was to say that someone wasn't using them as watchdogs?

The snake shuffled almost guilty but with reason. "I am bored in the city. There is no food and everyone screeches and stomps on you."

"What could you tell me?" he asks like a child but the intelligence is there, hidden beneath innocence.

The snake makes a sound that passes for a growl. "Anything. I was hatched in a pet store not too far from Gringotts-that is where you are going, is it not?"

Harry looks at the adder. She was only about 50 centimeters and her thick body promised more growth as she aged; with dark bronze scales and a black zig-zag down its back and the occasional splotch here or there, she almost looked like the other British snakes, though she was poisonous.

"You promise you wont hurt us?" he asked, wary but also falling into the trapping idea of her usefulness.

Her head nodded, an odd display of intelligence from a non-humanoid. "Yes, I will not hurt you, my meal-ticket."

"How should I hold you?" he asked, but she just quickly grasped onto him with her body. He gasped at the feeling. She was coiling up under his shirt. Where she only looked a little over 30cm as she slithered on the ground, she must have been nearly 4ft by the length of her spread out body. She was a little to tight and he told her so before she retracted some and put her head near his ear on his left shoulder. "I am comfortable." she spoke with a near purr sound coming from her hisses._ I bet you are_, he thought almost irritably. It was well known that snakes were not so carious in Brittain and the cooler areas do to the climate.

He'd gone down from his high of earlier and had to remind himself what it was he was doing. And with a settled sigh, he made his way invisibly towards a pub that only magical people could see. "It's our birthday, you know," he told the adder. "What isss a birthday?" the adder asked. He got in to an explanation of it as they headed off.

* * *

Diagon Alley was striking to Harry, a boy stuck in hatred and something his late relatives had considered 'normal.' Honestly though, it was pretty abnormal to everyone else. People littered the streets going their merry ways through the shops and things. Harry could imagine the scene from a hundred years previous in a metropolis if it wasn't for the more unexplainable side of things. A line of candles floated overhead as a mother shuffled her brood along. Their red hair stuck out and he watched them for a moment almost in jealousy. But he didn't do jealous.

The adder spoke up and he began moving again, dodging the occasional runner and gang of sparkly people. A loose hat feel the the floor, the point of the top slightly bent in. He walked by it and put it on over his invisible head. it wouldn't do to stick out like a sore thumb. And anyways, it wasn't like he was stealing.

Behind him, he didn't notice as a man surrounded by a small gaggle of children looked around with a frown, looking for his trick hat.

He could see a large building of yellow-white rock sticking from a corner building. The adder on his shoulder made him aware that the building a little too grand for her taste was his destination.

He stepped in, not even noticing the lines of poetry standing stalwart and noticeable near the entrance because he was too buys looking down at Ella who had opened her eyes and was trying to look around.

Three hours later, a very tired Lord Harry James Potter and his sister Lady Ella Shaylie Potter flooed to Potter Manor. Blood adopted into the family, Ella seemed to be smiling. It must have been contagious as three of the goblins that had been servicing their meeting had odd grins as well. A newly dubbed 'Ssssissss' had curled around a tall perch and learning what she could throughout the meeting.

As the clock struck midnight beginning the first day of August in 1997 (random year, so don't bother me with consistency), an eight-year-old High Lord of House Potter disappeared from the wizard's wizarding world, and into that of politics, magic, and the muggles he had grown up around.

Recipes were mixing in the back of his mind, and the ingredients were at his very fingertips.

* * *

**_END_**.

Okay, the point of this was to show how Harry kills the Dursleys with what they taught him and doesn't regret it. But it got a little longer and went off in a tangent probably missing the whole point. And NO I AM NOT ADDING MORE! I have too many projects as it is that I don't have the time or the energy for it.

* * *

**_MINI OMAKES_**: 

Lord Potter sits in a cushioned chair in the Headmaster's office. His green eyes are shaded and without the glasses he had needed once upon a time. "Harry m'boy," Dumbledore begins.

"Headmaster," he greets blankly. His hatred for this man is hidden shields of Occlumency the manipulator tries to pick past.

"Lemon drop?" Headmaster A. W. P. B. Dumbledore offers, putting his hand out towards a metallic bowl of yellow innocent-looking candies. He nods and motions, taking one from the bowl. The old man behind the desk twinkles his blue eyes behind the half moon glasses. Harry pops his lemon drop into his mouth and moves as to suck on it greedily.

"May I ask where you have been?" Dumbledore questions after a round of annoying small talk meant to belittle Harry's plays below his own. Lord Potter does not bother correcting it, but neither does he show a child to the old man.

"You may," he states blandly, looking him right in the eye and giving away nothing. Inside, he smirks in his hatred.

After a second, Dumbledore frowns. "Harry, where have you been?" he asks, and his voice is such a 'grandfatherly' act that it threatens to make Harry sick.

"_That_, is _none_ of _your_ business, Heir Dumbledore," Lord Potter says, putting it simply and remarking that his place is far below his own.

Frowning, a string if anger lights through the man's eyes for a second and then disappears. But Harry has caught it and grins inwardly. "Come now, Harry-" but he's had enough.

"I am not one of your students, Heir Dumbledore, and insist you use the title that befits my station." His voice has risen in demand of that of a man in his prime though it isn't truly a yell. "And as to my past, you are the head of a school and a man in Wizengamot. You have no right to my name, title, or anything pertaining to my place of residence." There is silence for a second, and on his shoulder Ssssissss hisses to him about how the portraits are watching him go against the headmaster with great attention.

"Now, let's get straight to it." He begins weaving an air of spells around them, invisible to all but he and the serpent around him under the outer cloaks the wizards insist on wearing. "Less than an hour after my parents were murdered, you placed me in a home not fit for an independent cat," he was quite fond of most all creatures, and the house elves often reminded Harry of himself at a very young age, "and then never saw fit to look in on me." Silence ringed around them, and Headmaster Dumbledore had not realized how the portraits had suddenly turned black, shutting out the people that would have looked in on him. "Now, Heir Dumbledore, you must explain to me how you subjugate a young and innocent child to hell."

The blue eyes behind half moon glasses had gone familiarly blank, and for the next four hours, Harry asked questions, and Dumbledore told the truth. Wrung out, Harry sighed and pinched his nose as he cataloged everything he had learned and been proved. "And why, Dumbledore, do you do all of this?"

There was silence. "It is all for the greater good." Harry hated him.

But he also pitied him. _No mercy_, he thought. Nodding. "Goodbye, Heir Dumbledore.

Harry looked down at the bowl and picked out a lemon drop. The old man had never noticed that Harry had not taken one of the dosed treats, but had enjoyed one of his own having known of the old goat's little habit. When he'd reached for the bowl, Harry had dropped a lemon drop of his own into the bowl. Only this one was _special_.

Besides, Harry preffered Bertie Bott's every-flavor candy canes-a new taste every lick. In fact, he was planning his own magical brand off all-flavor products. His sister was impatiently awaiting the chocolates-they had all chocolate flavors every random bite, but only chocolate possibilities. THe fact that they were 75 percent less fat and sugar was going to be a hit. Elle couldn't understand why she couldn't have a batch or three hundred since she was his sister.

Shaking his head, he looks around the room in fnality, feeling a large red stone in his hand and pocketing it for later; and then he walked out of the office and down the moving spiral staircase not at a snails pace. Behind him, grayed eyes became blank blue again and the portraits gained their color back and access to what passed as their life. With measured steps, the one known once in a past life as 'boy' made his way into the ever hated Medical ward run by the ever patronizing patroness, Madam Pomfrey. He grinned sardonically as he heard her ordering around some poor excelling herbology student that had made the mistake of getting caught out late or something else to earn a detention.

He slipped his 'father's trusty cape' over himself and slipped in. When the loud matron was out of site, he slipped in and conjured a feather. Tickling a sleeping girl's nose with it, it twitched and she gave a spasm as she woke from shear annoyance. "Wh-who's here?" she asked with a yawn He curled his cloak to show only her his eyes and mouth, lower than the scar he had an appointment to rid himself of in a month.

"Hey."

"You!" she said fiercely but not loudly or unkindly.

"Me," he grins impishly and a hint of his inner mischief shines through. He is a man and a Lord but also still a boy. Ella has kept him sane. He's not totally selfish. He'll help who he can. He hands her an envelope and she looks at curiously. "Just in case you ever need to talk to someone who knows hell," and then he's gone and the only proof she has of him is the blue envelope in her hands. She turns it over and smiles. What she doesn't realize is that, while she reads "Ginny 'Red' Weasley," all anyone else will see is squiggles.

She opens it. The first thing she notices is a diary and she hesitates. Gathering her courage she picks it up and opens. The left page is pink and the right is blue. She'll have to ask why later. There is also a box of sweets and another of box of different chocolates. She smirks at that because whoever it was that saved her must have known something about females. On each is a scrabbled number. And again, only she doesn't see squiggles.

Hanging back, he watches her open it. He smiles when she smiles and leaves when she pops a chocolate in her mouth. He's glad to give her some cheer, but he has an appointment with Lady Flamel and then has a restaurant to get back to enjoying.

* * *

Okay. END END END for final of this little DITD. 

Trivia: On a cook's hat there are little ridges. How many are there and what do they mean?

103: there are 103 different things to do with eggs in a kitchen. (and no i don't know what they are.)

Did You Know?: The higher the hat, the more important a person in a kitchen the person is?


	15. Knowing Boy II

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* * *

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DITD:

Knowing Boy II

**Characters:** Harry

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(Prologue)

_**DITD:**__ Knowing Boy_

_**Characters:**__ Harry, Lily, James, etc._

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* * *

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Hadyn James Potter was born July 31st at the last minute while his twin brother was born the first minute of August. He was a smart boy from the start who didn't always cry like his brother did at every inconvenience. He chose instead to watch. The attention quickly strayed from him to his normal brother; his parents thought that maybe something might have been wrong.

_Halloween night when the boys were a year old a madman attacked their home. Curiosities of magic worked their unknown way and reflected the infamous killing curse back at its caster. Godric's Hollow, falling apart around the two boys, would leave many effects. Cut on his chest as his older brother fell to the dark and dreams of unconsciousness, Jamien Heraldo Potter was thrown on shoulders, and an old man with manipulative and twinkling blue eyes that smelled of lemon drops and verituserum claimed him 'The-Boy-Who-Lived', whatever that meant. Jamien Potter was thought to have destroyed this dark lord and little of anything was spared for the Potter heir, though James Harold Potter didn't really think of him that way._

_Hadyn James Potter wasn't abused, but his parents did not really spare feelings for him. He was neglected. It wasn't like he didn't have clothes; it was the little things that stood out. Harry's opinion on even color was never asked. Jamien got what he wanted, when he wanted, how he wanted, and with whom he wanted. There had never really been a twin bond between the two of them, which would later shock the Weasley twins into a brotherly love with Hadyn._

_A few years pass by and the neglected son can often be found in the Potter Library or adventuring around the Potter forests where many creatures lay. His parents thought him quiet and an unspoken thought traveled between them. Maybe he wasn't all there. Maybe he was a tad out of where his brother was. Maybe he just didn't care. Maybe he had no magic, so he wasn't interested in things Jamien was. Hadyn Potter learned not to care for Lily and James Potter as they had never cared for him. His own godfather had spirited his twin brother away and left him in the dust too. _

_But Jamien's godfather, Remus "Moony" Lupin, seemed to have a kind eye for the boy and quickly learned that Harry was not mentally ill or a squib. He would follow his 'cub' from a while away and watch over him when he chose to roam the gates and numerous portraits, greeting animals, ancestors, and house elves alike and being greeted in the curious fondness he gave off. The portraits, he found, were much more cooperative and knowledgeable when Harry asked for something or inquired about something that caught his interest. _

_What Harry never showed or talked of was that he learned to talk to the power that drummed in his veins in a way that had not been done before. The presences that always surrounded him lifted his spirits and sung him to sleep the way his mother and father did to his brother. He was pleased, and he liked to watch the animals' flow of energy, the colors fascinating and the various rhythms lively._

_He rarely talked, but when he did he was surprisingly learned and scholarly as he had no one to talk to._

_When he turned four, his uncle Moony, as he called him, had taken him to a clan meeting secretly when he got stuck baby sitting. Harry particularly liked the couples that sat poshly on the high thrones and liked to glare and converse heatedly with each other. They meshed in his child mind. He couldn't really explain it though. They liked to sneer at one another and wage battles of will._

_He didn't like the battle part of it, but it was amusing._

_He knew them only by nicknames. There were elves and vampire elders. There were Were pack leaders and Centaur groups. There were different types of lamia from beautiful snake women, men and children who he often spoke to in their hissing and translated for those who did not understand or were not bonded to snakes. There were even a few Satyrs, though not really in large groups. Satyrs are half man and half goat with some monkey blood. They are quite agile, and like trees despite their land based feet. _

_The harpies he wasn't fond of at first, as they always talked of stealing him away and eating him. But soon it was just teasing and they liked to tease more then they really ate. Most harpies, he found, ate smaller prey and many greens. Sometimes they would be greeted by a moon women, a giant woman who came out at night to lay eggs. She had a giant human female body but out of the eggs came modern giants and all sorts of other creatures with some part human. Usually they had at least the head of a human, but not always. Often the hatched would disappear into the forest and never be heard from again. He felt sorry for the Moon Woman and called her "Ma'am Moon."_

_Sometimes gansas, swans with webbed feet and a single talon often flew around her. She told him that they would flock to her in mass droves when it was time for migration and she would chaperone them to the moon until it was time to come back and be normal geese for the spring._

_Baphomets were a two headed person, with one head being male and the other female. At first he thought it had to be in the woman's body, but he learned later that it would just be rude to walk around naked in a man's body. They acted like twins and he liked most of them, though sometimes they were quite different. Senka he knew was kind and strict while her brother head Sunko was grouchy. But when it came to decisions, they were clear and together._

_He even got to meet a golem once, and Agurine, a lamia, taught him how to make it like himself. Hadyn wrote "EMET" on its forehead and it turned into a replica of himself. It wasn't very smart though and he eventually rubbed the E off of it, letting it fall back into it's clay ball that it came from._

_A Nereid is a sea Nymph. There are fifty daughters of Nereus, and sometimes Engina came by. She had shockingly electric blue hair and purple eyes. She was a normal size for a human female, and acted like one. The only main difference was that she had small gills behind her ears, and her feet would shift into a mushy fin when in the water. _

_Naiades are her cousins that live in small bodies of water like fountains and little diving pools. When you look into blue water and see your reflection, they splash you if they like you. Harry got splashed a lot; it made him aware of how much he was around water, but he didn't dislike it._

_Mermaids were half-sisters of neraids, much the same as their own half-sisters. The only real difference was that mermaids always had fins, and never feet. Rarely, a melusine (mermaid with two tails instead of two feet) by the name of Aisilie accompanied some coming from the sea. She was polite but remained quiet, keeping her thoughts to herself._

_Once, he even saw a Were that was lower in a pack present a Goose tree to one of the higher Weres. He had to save the lower's hide when the elder was offended. He didn't much like either of them but he told them that the geese represented beauty while the fact that they grew from trees instead of being born or hatched represented that they lived and died like the tree, and when they died their own ashes would help fertilize underneath and possibly grow another sapling. They calmed but he could tell that the alpha was a macho man and didn't really care. He didn't really think he'd last much longer._

_Hadyn led an odd life, and much to Moony's shock, but inward role of the eyes, many of the magical creatures that would usually have nothing to do with anyone not of their kind took a liking to the young boy that wanted to know about them and treated them as if they were only kind of different in that they weren't Harry himself._

_Taking a liking to the boy, many of the leaders met with him, and they dubbed him Shadyn Greene of the Grey. They had feuded for so long that he seemed to be some miracle super glue, and just stuck all together for him. He was like a bridge between continents. The magical animal kingdom that only passed by word of mouth referred to him as Shadyn Greene of Grey light, formally, and then Shadyn in person. _

_When he was 4 and 7 months, he came across a clearing he had never seen before. Though he was cautious, his mind knew that this was part of his land, and his curiosity won out. He liked to wander and find new places. When his mind spun out of control and the ground started coming up to him, he knew he should have listened to the caution in him, but it was too late now._

_

* * *

_

Legend speaks of a boy. Before the Founders and Myrridin and Arthur Pendragon and the round table were around. Before the power of magic was known or harnessed. Before the magical creatures started appearing, there came a legend, a legend about a boy who first spoke "Magic." But then, its just a legend, and many things are just gossip.

_Many forget though that even the most unlikely things have the slightest hint of truth._

* * *

He landed in a rocky terrain, large trees as high as the clouds and farther then he could see stood tall around him. No one was here really that he could find. Once, he called for his Uncle Moony. And then he called for the council. He even called for "Ma'am Moon" but there was no trace or whisper from her. He finally stopped calling them when he found he was all alone. There were no signs of life but the wild around him.

No one answered and he knew from there that he would have to survive alone. It was difficult to really learn what to do, as he had lived in a house where magic wasn't unusual and many little things even he had been taken for granted.

He learned quickly what to eat and not eat, his magic helping him when he really needed it. There were berries everywhere and odd greens that might slightly resemble vegetables if he could get his mind off of watching the bugs crawl through it. He then decided that when it came to some things, he'd stick to some type of animal ran after him once, and he had no way to defend himself. So his wild magic threw out a punch and let fall a single stone that snowballed down until a rockslide tossed the animal down the hill. He felt bad, because he had probably killed it and he didn't like killing, but he supposed it was better then dying.

Time that seemed like an eternity passed to the four year old. Though he had no idea how long he had really been there, he kept a chicken scratch paper and transfigured pen in his pack he had made when he was bored. Some two foot leaves and some twined stems that worked as handles gave him a little backpack that he could carry things in. He'd stop every now and then and set up a camp. It was simply. The roots were large and thick, so he found one that encompassed some patches about the size of his bedroom in Godric's Hollow. Setting up the camp became second nature within a month or so and he didn't even have to use much energy for it.

The leaves were anywhere from an inch like what was normal to him to a few fee in width and another few in length. He often had to jump away from falling debris or cast some type of shield. It became second nature for him to set up invisible shields around his small camps so that he would not be smashed to bits. Sometimes he could carry some of the leaves or transplant them over in order to make a little covered niche for himself so that the cold air could not get in.

He had learned many of the cooling and warming charms, but he wasn't perfect. He didn't know how to make real meal foods like his mother made for their little family, sadly not including himself. But he had gotten used to his own makeshift family of Moony and all of the others he met at the meetings.

By the time he concluded he was six, he had discovered that his magic didn't really falter or strain like it once had. In order to move easier through some of the jungle parts, he could self transfigure and be as big and tall as his dad and stronger then Moony. The plants and animals he passed he greeted and found that most of the intelligence then was mostly instinctual, and that knowledge seeking mainly focused on surviving then anything else.

One day, he came across a dead bear creature and found that its cub was still in its huddled cave. He fed the bear like creature and made sure she was okay before he moved forward. But unlike the normal creatures he met, she stuck around him, following him and actually holding conversations. He named her Merrybelle. He spoke to her in a language that wasn't English just as he spoke to any other creature.

The berries along their path he had to watch because the bear loved berries, and he couldn't have her eat anything unhealthy. He didn't know what he would do without her, and one wrong berry could mean that she might die. When he finally got her used to what berries were good and what weren't, he counted up his chicken scratches and found he was almost nine. What he noticed was that he didn't naturally age any, and neither did Merrybelle, who should have grown just as fast as he did. He talked to her about this, but it was only passing interest. They found plenty of games and places to interest themselves.

When they were playing a game of red tag, in which they smashed one another with berries instead of actually touching one another, Harry came across a hoard of snakes, or at least some kind of serpent. Long bodies were covering a patch of ground in which there were coils of the wiggling bodies. Outside of a filled hole about the size of a large pool or two, there were a few who were not allowed in though. So when he came across one such serpent being chased out by a few heads still tangled in the garbled mess, he quickly picked her up. Although all of those serpents could have killed them if they ganged up, he knew that the instincts of such snakes were just to be alone, and not bothered. And he strongly suspected that the mingling snakes were bothered.

Running from the silky predators who should have been her kin, the serpent settled down around Shadyn before either of the two really knew one another. They watched, ready to act and were relieved when the others went back to their wiggling mass. They talked for a while and Shadyn just shrugged kind of happy when the serpent told him that she would like to stay and travel with him. He spoke to her in hisses that weren't English and he named her Ssseiss for the six that had gone after her. She needed a name and it was as good as any, Spanish for the number six, the devils number to those who believed in that kind of thing.

Ssseiss was half grown when she found them and she continued to lengthen as time went by. But her organs and self didn't age any more then that. Both child and bear were about the same size, though Merrybelle was definitely bulkier. She still lived off of berries though she'd eat some other stuff if she had to. The trio traveled together, viewing the world and learning, a way that animals had never before.

One day on a random walk before they set up camp an egg fell out of a tree. Using reflexes he only sorta knew he had he grabbed the egg out of thin air before it had a chance to hit the ground. It was jostled but he still felt the life in the pulpy egg running residual. He knew the egg was alive and he wasn't looking to eat it. Knowing how Shadyn was, Merrybelle jokingly asked him why he wasn't going to eat it. He jokingly told her that he wasn't a cannibal and also did not eat live things.

They camped early, and Harry transfigured a bowl simply shaping it from a large piece of bark. He gathered some pieces of stiff and some fat, and he covered the egg with some leathered leaves more then four feet around. He tied it gently but firmly and made sure the egg was safe and warm with a slight warming charm. Ssseiss took some time while traveling to gently sway it while Harry was walking with a sticking charm on the bowl. He currently had it stuck on the pouting Merrybelle at random times.

They continued traveling, though slower than usual. It wasn't as if they had to meet up somewhere. They were just traveling because they could not stay in one place.

A while passed by until one day Harry noticed the life force was different and Ssseiss felt much movement. They camped down for a few days as they waited for her to hatch. When the egg did hatch, out came an ugly bald bird. He knew that it had to grow into its beauty, but the 'birth' was beautiful for all of them. As she was newly hatched all she did was feed and poop for a while. They were still for a few more days until they were too bored. Traveling again, Ssseiss stayed near the hatchlet to feed her when she was hungry, which as Shadyn knew by her grouching, was quite often. There was a little packet of cut up worms that Shadyn called 'sack wyrms' as they were really creepy but great fiber according to other birds he met. They were silky and their skin pulled each other. They grossed him out and they had no thought processes whatsoever, so he didn't feel guilty any.

Weeks past this way, and small fluff appeared. When those bits of white fell off feathers came past the skin, a dark bronze color that only seemed to sort of fit her, though the dark black beak that peaked made her look perfect. The only thing really wrong with her was that her eyes did not work-the bird was blind. Shadyn supposed that, because she had never seen with her eyes, it was not a loss to her.

When she finally gained the animalistic thought that was no longer one of a nestling, Harry talked with her. She took the name Hedwig and though she was quite young, took in the sibling thoughts like a fish to water.

As time passed further, Harry stopped by the flying birds as they passed and for a little nursing or pulling of a stick stuck in a wing, Harry could get lessons for Hedwig on how to be a bird that hadn't come to her in her instincts or few memories passed on by her parents. Even with her inability to see, she sensed things like Harry could, and Merrybelle and Ssseiss had adapted to. She was quite a wonderful bird if Harry did say so himself, but then he might have been slightly biased. On these stops he also provided tips and searched for nest twigs and found food like worms and cut them appropriately for hatching squawkers.

Despite her growing maturity, as soon as Hedwig was no longer a nestling, she stopped growing. Hedwig was tiny, about the size of an adult human fist. But she was fast, wings flapping as if from a Snitch bird, unseen by predators that might have eaten her. The black feathers gave her plenty of hidden plumage to avoid being seen or eaten.

Harry's own magic was quite comfortable within him but still hummed when he let it wild around him, giving him a clear view of his surroundings and seeming to shield their camp from any creature wanting a snack. Larger animals stepped around them.

The four traveled together four years, not really aging and trying not to let it bother them. They preferred to revel in their immaturity and the playfulness they could find in their unambitious world. Their minds circled the clouds, finding shapes and getting happily distracted doing whatever. And though time passed by for Harry, he was still mentally a child, though more immature than any normal child. His magic helped him in his survival and he camped out always, sometimes finding a large hollow tree to dine in and other times taking shelter under largely covering roots of trees that reached high above them. He also enjoyed climbing, though he usually had to resort to his inner magic to get down when he was too tired to climb down.

One day though, in a dirt plain, something out of the ordinary happened. A mountain top exploded and the ground rumbled throwing all but Hedwig to the ground for cover; though the bird reached for a welcome shoulder or nest of short raven black hair. As he watched steam come, it was replaced with balls of fire that shot out like bombs from a cannon. It was followed by a lake of red that could have melted gold without being sunk in it. Fumes swallowed everything and they knew they were goners before they had a chance to run.

Right before they were covered in lava and ash, his magic fisted back and changed them. A sudden storm hit the land. Clouds gathered and green bolts of once-yellow lightning struck the flat land, away from the dying trees. Acid water poured from the darkening clouds as they were created. It mixed and held the four together, unconscious in a catacomb. They were unaware of the pressing metamorphosis.

Harry had changed a lot too. Magic comes through active blood, and when Harry was... entombed... his abilities that hadn't followed into him awoken, as did the others' abilities and many things that were quite new in the world. They were even given some things that hadn't yet been given by nature, until now.

In types of elemental abilities, Merrybelle became Earth, and solidity, combining life and metal. Hedwig became air and sight, her eyes changing and the water in her body there for healing. Ssseiss became water and acidic liquid. Shadyn Greene of Grey became Fire, Darkness, Storm, and Change.

Years passed by again, keeping them entombed in the earthen womb of the fiery ash that had grown hard around them. The metamorphosis took place and then kept a firm hold as they slowly coiled into the metaphysical side of things. When they awoke, Hedwig stated out loud how it felt like she was being hatched again as they picked apart their cocoon when someone found room.

They unentombed themselves to face the dark of night, stars shining as if twinkling at them knowing what they did not. As soon as they reached the fresh air they didn't need to breathe. The eyes, much better then they all had been. Though Harry hadn't needed his glasses since his awkward period that lasted two months when he was forty-two months old, he could see perfectly in the dark and it had nothing to do with his humming magic. His glowing green eyes held an obvious power to them now.

Hedwig's eyes that had not grown correctly when she had been in her own egg but in the shared cocoon they had regrown. She saw differently now, no longer half blind with more or less then a little light. In the dark or in the sun she could see a mile away, a sight quality she had found. Her feathers hadn't bulged any but some type of fur that porcupined when she was in trouble grew under her feathers. Her speed heightened much as well. Before, she was fast, but when she had to move fast she would hurry onward, and her size would decrease. She looked almost like a golden flash in the daytime.

Merrybelle had always had good eyes, better than a usual creature such as herself. It wasn't her eyes that had changed but her bones and some of her insides. She was metal plated inside, like plate metal beneath her fur, though she wasn't any bulkier. Later she would find that she could extend her nails and change her size and even her shape. For some reason she found herself often in a cat form. She especially liked the tiny calico version with different color patches. Calico cats are only girls, so there was no real reason not to be, except for that it wasn't her actual form. As a cat she could prance.

Ssseiss originally was a straight grey, almost black snake. Now her feathers changed much like some frogs and gecko skin, but she could truly change her color. She could even become invisible, and turn pitch black in the shadows. She could even make herself light up like a light bulb, though the others could see in the dark now. Her scales were more even, silking her body shell almost like she was some kind of water serpent with jelly skin, except it was hard. When she shed her last skin, she bunched up and then stretched to get out of her metal shell. Her newer skin was from then on a tad fresh but only for a few moments. She could shake and the scales would flatten and straighten up and then become like smoothe skin. Occasionally a scale would come free and then be replaced. The fallen bit could be used like a knife, it was so sharp. The only real problem was grip, but you rub a few mud salves and let it wear away a tad, and you could melt another with it and eventually come up with an ivory-like blade with a smoothe silky hard handle.

There was more, but they hadn't figured out everything about themselves. It was interesting, though somewhat disconcerting to not know everything about one's self. But they lived for the adventure in their wanderings. Hedwig found her new white self to be very intimidating, her green eyes occasionally flashing amber yellow-green when in large sets of emotion.

Harry had changed a lot too. Magic comes through active blood, and when Harry was... entombed... his abilities that hadn't followed into him awoken.

From their years together, all four had considered themselves as a pride of sorts, though Ssseiss still insisted that the term 'Pride' offended her ancestors. After that made its way out of her mouth she referred to them as that, though it didn't catch on. She loved offending other serpents. It was just part of who she was. After their blending and transformation in the 'egg,' they considered themselves brother and sisters. It didn't really change much between them, but it gave them more time to do and the abilities to travel faster.

A human finds them once, and though Shadyn remembers English, the other does not speak it anyways. She is as young as he looks in his real age and she takes him on to the village. Her red hair sets her apart from the rest, and the small brown spots around her nose make her adorable. He would agree with this but though his mind is has aged; the actual maturity of the mind that has grown is now that of a twelve year old.

It takes him a while, but he's half settled in six months down the road and has soaked up their language like a fish takes to water. The girl calls him Shadyn, but she is the only one. In their own ancient language, they call him kin-of-beast. He doesn't live in a rock cave among them, but instead settles in the grassy forests with his sister animals. The newest powers develop further, and he finds himself proud of his control, though what else besides learning control is there to do in the forest with no real reason but to survive? He is careful to keep his powers from the tribe, as he does not know this outcome.

Another year goes by, and Shadyn relearns the lesson that nothing will stay the same; things change, as well as secrets and the mysteries around such secrets. The girl is trapped in a sudden forest fire and Harry saves her by simply walking through the intense flames and pulling her from them. Save a scratch against her leg from a dry stick, she is unharmed. There is some smoke inhalation, but she is crying of relief. He saves her and the tribes wish to give her to him, what he would consider as a marriage. He declines and they don't understand, but he makes sure she knows that he is a friend.

She doesn't understand but knows he doesn't mean any hard feelings by it. A few years later, when he tires of being in one place, he thinks to move on. The girl is taller than him now and ready for the adventure of young adulthood. She is fourteen, though her people do not count age as such; she is 57 changes of season. As her friend, she believes she is his because of how he saved her. Though the town loves her, she talks him into allowing her with them in their travels. A year goes by as they travel, walking from place to place or catching rides on willing animals and floating down river banks. But eventually they find another village and he greets them as he knows to greet the girl's people. They are different, he finds, but allows them to enter and mingle as guests.

When she lies with one from the new tribe, things continue in the course of change. She will be a mother in a while. But he has tired of all of this stillness again and makes the hard decision to leave, knowing she will have to stay. She gifts him goodbye with a necklace made from blue and red reed stems twisted together tightly and a flat bark piece he can use as a small cup for water hanging from it. There is a spiral shape she carved into it with her own personal sign. Though writing is not yet brought into the civilizations, she feels connected to this symbol.

He gifts her with something extraordinary: the first true drawing. A little magic provides him with a flat whitish paper he can draw on. Instead of getting a pen or quill, he does it a different way and carves a small stick for his drawing, and then with the reed juices, he draws her. It takes him a good two days, but she is standing beneath many high trees, smiling in the spiraling wind drawn up from her own inner magic. The light shines on her, and in great detail, he draws her picture. There is something there that thinks she is beautiful, but even if he knew his self in these feelings, they weren't as a lover but as a sisterly friend who he had met on his travels.

Before he leaves though, she asks him how he saved her. In the tongue known everywhere for this one word, he replies, "Magic." And though she only knows of it from what he's told her, she knows he does not lie to those he loves, and she has become a good friend. She wishes him goodbye.

Shadyn, Merrybelle, Hedwig, and Ssseiss travel for awhile again. There is no definite travel path, but they are somewhere known. He had charmed another long parchment that he is used to in order to map his travels with small landmarks to show and feet for their travels. The village they first came to is represented by a fire and a girl sign. Hedwig's hatching and the catch of her early egg has been put down as an egg and a cracked shell. There is a pool of snaky bodies for where he found Ssseiss and a picture of a cherry where he came across Merrybelle. There is a girl with a circle belly for the second town he came across, where the girl was settled. When significant things happen or they see something like a large mountain that looks like a giant block of cheese, there is a mark. A small volcano picture sits where their metamorphoses took place.

More time passes by.

Her red hair will carry down unto thousands of generations. Her best friend has departed her side for the business of wandering after something he doesn't know or name. Answers, maybe. They will never see each other again, they know. He moves on eventually, feeling this in his bones. But once she was his friend and now she always will be.

Years stretch by and the quartet travels wherever their feet take them. Shadyn knows that, eventually, he will end up in his own time a million plus years later if he keeps it up. They're not eager to do anything but keep up with their games, and when they have to play days straight of hide & seek.

He speaks with them in many different languages; when one learns something other, the knowledge gets passed around. His mind does not often stray to Lily or James or his birth brother, but he tells Merrybelle, Ssseiss, and Hedwig often of his Uncle Moony and the many tribe heads of the Animal Council that had become his substitute parents before he had come to this place in some time.

Eventually, they start finding more and more tribes with different peoples. Sometimes they are welcomed. Sometimes, they are chased away. They all have slight differences. Eventually, he runs into the second tribe that he had dropped of his Friend. He is told that she has passed on, and is sad. But her youngest grandchild is there, the only girlchild from her blood, and much like her great grandmother he had left ages ago.

She takes the picture he drew that has remained unharmed thanks to his wild magic and asks him to draw her too. In this granddaughter, he finds another friend. The first written language comes into existence in this odd cave he takes the time and firelight to draw her image. He signs his name, and then her own in his calligraphic cursive. She cannot read it but knows what it says.

That image is placed next to her grandmother's for all to remember, and he takes the time to play with her, greeting his bonded kin and introducing them. He takes her in as she wants to travel like her grandmother did and he teaches her some of his craft. It seems she is a fountain of information and he slowly gets her comfortable with it. Eventually, she is the first apprentice. He shows her what he can that she can do, but she has a fast mortality next to him and her life can only harbor so much learning. Parts of him are still young and childish though, and while she grows and matures, he can only go so far.

Four years and seven months they travel before coming to another village that she decides to settle down in. She becomes a mother in a village, and this time he sticks around until after the baby is born, a boy. There will only be boys for a very long time, he feels.

His birch necklace is still intact like the two photographs long after they should have disintegrated into dust. As her own goodbye, she crafts for him a large walking stick made of a dark black wood she found in the many odd trees surrounding the wood. Having learned his 'magic' as best she could, she waves him over before he leaves and tells him that his _forever friend_ will be the third he sees of the red strands.

Normally, it might have not been understood, but her and the elder girl who befriended him can understand some things, though neither really knows what she means. He is patient in this, as he is still young. He has his bonded kin to accompany himself until such a time that he finds this girl. He leaves, both with the others' blessings.

Yet more days and weeks fly by without much of a notice, and the amber-eyed once-blind Hedwig whose feathers were black as night in the shadows and then white as untouched snow in the daylight flew soundly and speedily. Ssseiss, who was the technical elder of them, all, had been almost adult when she came across the Shadyn boy. Occasionally, she would find a worthy suitor that would temporarily mate with her to promote the natural act of bumping up the species. An oddness with this was that there would only be a single egg each time. Although the tiny snakelings survived more than most, they were different. Some were tiny, some were large. Some had odd properties, some were poisonous, some were normal.

Hedwig was still tiny, never really mating because of this. One day on a stormy sky above them, one of those once-in-a-normal-lifetimes events occurred. Hedwig found a nest of four unhatched and unhindered eggs and Harry took them into his arms to protect them. The fluke that occurred was a bolt of lightning attracted by the many trees, followed by many stepladders, shot down and electrocuted them all. Shocked, they still raised the eggs to hatching.

The lightning must have done much, as before the four eggs had multiplied into twenty-four little ellipse globes. They were distinctly different when the embryos cracked and out popped many heads. There were two heads in each of the twenty-four eggs, a boy and female. Eventually, the birds would become known as phoenixes, dragons, Snitch-birds, and wyverns, which were dragon-like but with bird wings instead of scaly flails.

Eventually, the birds mated and split up, spreading their eggs and new species. But the natural imprints of Shadyn and his animal kin stayed, to make their way through time, almost a natural respect, one could say. Certain knowledge like instinct would pass down into the nestlings of their own nestlings.

Things went on as usual for a while. Every now and then something odd would occur; maybe they found a new animal or a new tribe. Something else on their map would be marked. Life went on for the four kin, perfect in its ongoing simplicity and barely slight changes. But Fate, who had been beaten by chance would not submit herself, would have her way it seemed. As one day, Shadyn was swept forward in time as he had once been pulled back, unaware of what had happened until the world stopped spinning, and it changed. Ssseiss, Hedwig, and Merrybelle were no longer surrounding him, speaking of their next game of Hide & Seek.

But as fairness goes, Chance got her turn again, and he didn't get pulled nearly as far as he had the first time when he went backwards.

Hadyn Potter had long ago quit counting the years with his kin, but his three blood siblings had not come with him. So as it seemed, he'd be counting again…

* * *

He wakes alone. He's backed up against a herd of tall round trees. But these, there is no fog to hide them and he can easily see the rusty green foliage miles upward. He walks for a while, looking around and testing his waters. He feels strange being alone, and more lonely then before he was taken by his Uncle Moony to the Animal Council meeting.

Shadyn quickly starts missing his kin and the conjured skin and other animals that will sing him or hold him in the arms of Morphias do not seem to help. A deep desperation sets in him, loneliness for his sister beings that are not there. He searches, but he cannot find them.

He dreams that the aerial fliers are his Hedwig, and the serpents that greet him are his Ssseiss. The larger animals can't possibly be his Merrybelle but the one thing he has greatly besides magic is imagination. Sometimes, he can pretend. It was no use, as eventually the horrible realization that he was truly alone in his knowledge scared him.

He walks into a town and makes his clothing appear like other young adults. He makes himself look about fifteen years of age, so no one thinks he is really strange, nothing but a traveler, a bard and a scripter, looking for knowledge and passing it on. His darkly black walking stick has long soaked up his magic, almost like those wands he can remember from his original time. It was a staff of sorts that he used to ward certain areas, and then plainly help him walk over harder terrain when he didn't want to show his powers or familiarity with the wilderness to people he did not know.

A year spent under the guise of a scholar in one single town, and he is getting bored, the things he learns are mostly inconsequential to anything else he does. He is still lonely though, although many passing serpents and animals like to keep him company. The odd creatures didn't fill the holes left by his animal kin. He wasn't soothed by anything, though his walking staff became like a safety blanket, as did the old leafy backpack and birch necklace.

As his odd luck would have it, just when he was ready to leave, he found a man beating his young apprentice. The man, heavy and drunk as he was, made Shadyn angry; so he frowned and stepped in and took the young boy by the hand. About four years of age, the boy had bruises and a definite case of malnutrition, though that wasn't all that strange in these times. When the master worker challenged him to a duel of the sword, Hadyn accepted and, right in the square, they fought.

It was a quick duel, and Shadyn waited until the man had attempted to strike him to fight back. Master's sword met Shadyn's staff. He had been perfectly willing to defend himself until the man regained sense and passed out, but when the drunken man tried to hit the young wide-eyed, watching boy with a wooden chair, Shadyn protected him, simply killing him. He wasn't bloodthirsty really, and he in no way enjoyed killing, but in times like this, it had to be done. And he'd let no harm come to children.

As was his right for killing the master, he took the boy with him, and simply sent the killed master's family some cash. Most would have turned them into slaves, but then he wasn't most. He'd make sure they flourished and he stayed in town for another week. The woman would probably marry herself off or find a suitable reason not to before he left anyway.

He sat the boy down and asked him his name. He didn't have one, just got called 'boy' all of the time it seemed. He hid his angry eyes for a moment and told the boy that he needed a name. The boy thought he was suddenly in trouble and flinched away. It took him a moment but Shadyn's fierce trust and love for animals and his gentle hands helped the boy understand that he wasn't in trouble.

Shadyn took to calling him "young lad" until the boy thought one up. "I only remember what my mother's name was, Myrlana, so I shall be Myrrida." But Shadyn thought that sounded more like a girl's name, so he changed it, as was the right of a master. "No, your name shall be Myrrdin. Your first daughter's name shall be Myrrida." The newly christened Myrrdin was a tad shocked at that but he was so thankful for the help that he didn't mind. He had a roof over his head and a person that cared for him as he did anyone else was a true blessing.

One day when the boy was barely five years of age, he had a bout of accidental magic when a rock storm appeared, and instead of crushing them all, an orb shield appeared over them. They'd had to leave the town as the mere muggles there started to think of him differently; afraid he was some kind of devil and some kind of god mix there to either bring them to some version of Nirvana or Hades. Myrrdin soon became Shadyn's second real apprentice, even though the young lad was still in a stupor that Shadyn had no troubles with him.

Harry still ached for the companionship of another being like himself. Shadyn took to reverting to his true childlike body that he had built up; eventually he told Myrrdin most of the truth, though nothing really personal. Myrrdin took to changing his form as well; the belief in magic was the only real rule. Uncountable years with his kin had taught Harry the exact shapes and machinations of animals, which he had taught to Myrrdin in order for him to shift appearances at will. Myrrdin couldn't really manage to turn into more than a few, and if he didn't want to do more, Hadyn was patient enough to not push this further as long as he had some basics down.

Years went by and the boy beaten that Shadyn found in the alley so long ago flourished into a young man. Myrrdin's master stayed in the background, preferring to stay out of the spotlight and away from prying eyes. Eventually, the world came to know Myrrdin as a very powerful, great sorcerer, though secretly he still could not beat his master. And as everything does, the old look he switched to become the real appearance of him.

A hundred plus years happened by and Myrrdin was looking quite old. His few children had long aged and had grandchildren of their own. He had buried Myrrida as the last of his own four children, though she was his first. Myrrdin was looking quite old, as was the glamouri that Hadyn wore constantly. And while the great sorcerer helped out many kingdoms, Shadyn traveled, hoping against hope that just maybe he'd find some clue of where his kin either died or resided. He had a thought that, as he didn't age, maybe they still wouldn't as they hadn't at his side.

He came across many non-humans in his travels. Dwarves burrowed in many mountains and Gengins constantly fought them for the land in which they loved to mine for the metal that attracted them so. After a few wars and changes under Shadyn's watchful eye, he eventually gathered all of their population and forced them to either sign a pact of alliance or perish. They didn't believe him at first, but when he showed them an image of their last battlefield, they reluctantly signed.

No creature wanted to go extinct. That was the whole point of living, to go on and preserve one's species. The Great Pact between the two races eventually combined them into a creature that would later be called 'goblin'. So as it was, with the pact on impact the dwarves and the Gengins interlaced their selves and most of the living became that of goblins, few dwarves or Gengins even in existence a few thousand years later.

In his travels, he met plenty of phoenixes, thunderbirds, snitch birds, and harpies, but he still found no trace of his beloved Hedwig. In his travels, he had met plenty of dragons, seas serpents, snakelings that would speak to him in one of the most ancient forms of serpent tongue; the more common snakes simply spoke Parseltongue. But he still found not a trace of his beloved Ssseiss. In his travels, he met many bears, boars, cats, and dogs, but he still found no mention of Merrybelle besides the old instinctive memories of them. It was as if they had disappeared out of the world, much like he had. But then, if he was here, where were they?

He didn't know but he refused to believe in their demises. His mind, though very old and knowledgeable, was still distressed with the loneliness of not having his kin near.

One day, randomly in a field of rare natural berries, his Gengin/Dwarven friends located him and brought up the idea for the economy. The humans were slowly but surely taking over their lands, so they needed to take part in the economy. He needed something to do, so he got his apprentice to talk to some of the kings and lords for him with his ideas. Being Myrrdin, he could get whatever he wanted with some manipulations at the courts.

They set land on a mountaintop to build on, using it sparingly to their advantage. The dwarven magics mined many a place while the Gengin magics did all of the digging of their home and their future place in the economy: a giant bank. The leveled dirt gave them more room to work through, and they spread out. Performing many complex spells and rituals, he changed the dimensions that the goblins had to work with; it made the area solely in their control, allowing them to coexist with the humans.

Being as conscious and careful as he was, he had them create a vault specifically for himself. He spoke to the heads about it. The vault he had in mind would last forever. He called it Vault Zero. He specifically detailed the words and safety features around it to match himself and only himself. With this, and all of the actual work he did in building Gringotts, he was gifted by the goblins with a twenty percent in the bank itself.

Although the Gengins and dwarves were confused as to many of the specifications, Vault Zero, they accepted the rules laid down for it. He was the only one Lord of this vault until specified by only himself otherwise. Even when he disappeared, as he was sure he would eventually, it was not to be used. He would come back for it, he assured them. This vault was part of the mainframe in the bank. It was the very bottom; lower and unseen by whomever it was that would eventually own Vault One.

His birch necklace had become practically a part of him, as had his walking stick. He felt more naked without them than he did without clothes. A few other things from his travels stayed with him. Mostly though, deeds, furniture, antiquities, and objects he didn't wish to use and everything else that wasn't basic but a bag of money went into Vault Zero.

He helped the goblins create a blood ritual spell to read ancestry and then a friend of his came up with an idea of a family tree for each of the major families. It had been updated and passed around to the idea of a tapestry for each family. He made sure they were secure before even thinking of going adventuring again.

And then he found those of magic, wizardry and then separate race magics, and gathered them together. He laid down the basic truth of magic to them, not that it was based on belief but that they had it and it was not a thing to be afraid of or that of pain. It was a gift of nature. He set down some basic laws, and then allowed those to evolve to concern all of those of magic.

Many were chosen as representatives to separate covens or Houses and each of them were somehow of brothers or cousins. These witches and wizards chosen became "Lord" or "Lady" of some great house. Each got a single Family Tapestry, a Crest, and a Family Motto according to some great achievement or action of someone memorable in their Families.

He had seen how many of the people that didn't understand the power act to it. Burning people at the stake or torturing or even drowning them. How stupid could they be? If they were a witch or wizard, they would be saved. If they weren't they were drowned. He had to make many 'miracles' as if he was some kind of god in order to save people. They were barbarians in ways that their cave people were not.

More years went by and one day he ran into a doleful creature that was the size of a child and somewhat looked like a small wizard terribly disfigured. They were called Gar Elfes, not like Elven creatures, who were humans with magic but much different then muggles or wizards. Elves were in touch with nature and lived in different hidden forested towns and hidden woods.

He talked to the creatures in a tongue he soon picked up with his own. He found many Gar Elfes and could vaguely compare them to some of the creatures he remembered lurking around in his home at Godric's Hollow many years ago. Trying to help them was a horrid affair. They died quickly, becoming nearly extinct because they could not reproduce nearly as fast as they died out. The only thing they could find that would keep them alive were bonds of a creature not of their own race.

Witches and Wizards were one of the better bonders, and he arranged it so they could bond. Seeking to repay them, the little Gar Elfes nearly slaved themselves out in order to survive. Stopping them was somewhat difficult but he had helped them into their misguided actions, so he would help them out of it. He decided that they would stay out of view and just do the little things for whichever family they were bonded too: making sure the paintings were dusted, a candle in every candelabra, wash a few dishes, keep intruders out, protect the babies if trouble came, weed a few little plots of garden, help a basket stay still. So the little creatures took a stand in their continuation and if it were necessary, they saved a life.

Pucks were those few who survived without bonds for a time, and instead of helping, they cause mischief. They could never really help, but they ganged up with some of the ancient faeries and spilt the milk down the chins or misfiled paperwork, or unripened some of the fruits. They did not cause harm, just mischief for the bonded Gar Elfes to work with. Looking down at his map, it was practically a new piece of parchment with all of this new foot printing and signature marks of all of the significant things that had happened. A small square room on the bottom gave him a scrolling area to read and write notes.

It was a few years after this that he started to adventure again, traveling onwards to new places he had actually never been that he fell into another glitch…

He looked up this time and found trees again, also different then what he had seen before. Part of him was relieved that he did not awake in a town. He wandered like he had before. He had become used to wandering. But even here he found no real mention of his kin but that few feelings of respect he had from the passing animals.

The first town he came to he acted again as a teen around fifteen years of age. After weeks of visiting each town nearby, he found two boys and two girls also in their teens; unlike most of these people, they had magic. The two girls he found in homes. One of the boys he found in slavery, and the other he found in an apprenticeship to a swordsman knight. It wasn't a large town, but they were the only four, save for an old woman soon to die anyways.

Convincing the parents/masters to let him have them as his own apprentices was easy. A simple Gollum convinced the mothers to hand over their daughters in the search for suitable husbands. Ewena Rokedney had a thirst for knowledge. It was forbidden for women to be scribes, but that was her wish in life.

Gaila Hewnlee was her only real friend from early childhood. Loyal to no real fault of her own, she wanted to travel and meet new people, make friends. With no fathers caring for them, it was easily decided that the girls would do fine elsewhere while their mothers stayed home and 'did what all mothers do' which translated to 'find a new husband for myself and ignore you until you can please me.'

Drweyn Grenyln was working as a squire to a knight who was not a nice man. The knight practically slaved young Drweyn out. Simply challenging the knight to a duel, after all, "he needed a new slave," it was quite simple to get young Drweyn in his care.

He simply threatened the master slaver for Aguns Screndnle. Unfortunately, he had been forced to kill the man when he reached to strike him. He felt guilt for having to take a life, but no guilt for who it was. Shadyn's travels had taught him many things, and though he hated the act of killing any creature, it had to be done. Screndnle was very shocked at what was doing. Apparently, the young squire-wannabe had been slaved because of his newly dead parents; they had killed his sister and he had cursed them for it.

Under his care, he told them that no, he wasn't going to slave them out and no, he wasn't really needing a slave. He showed them magic. As their formal master, he had them choose their names. Drwyn chose his name Gryffindor, Godric to be called. Ewena chose the name Ravenclaw, Rowena to be called. Gaila chose the name Hufflepuff, Helga to be called. Aguns chose the name Slytherin for his gift with the snakes, to be called Salazar.

When they were run out by torch-wielding non-magicking folk, they retreated into the forests. The new apprentices had no real idea about how to survive in this situation save a few survival instincts that had run through them. But Hadyn felt this type of living was his adventure, and he longed for it after a while of simple boredom. Salazar became quite anti-muggle visiting. He resented those who came after them simply because they were different. He hated racism almost as much as Shadyn. But he didn't hate muggles as a whole; his fond memories as a child centered around his sister, who had only been a year younger than himself. He had doted on her. When she had accidentally blown up a kitchen utensil when a neighbor had tried to feed her; she had been stoned to death before he could do anything.

Shadyn Greene taught them what they did not know of magic. Eventually, they started coming across plenty of child-wizards and witches. As there were too many to simply take on as more apprentices, Rowena came up with the idea of a school; a school for magic became her desire to hold her library for the young to learn. It became Salazar's ambition in life, to protect the children as his sister Sina had not been. Helga desired to unite the world, but as that wasn't really an option, she'd stick with uniting the children to know they were not alone. Godric wanted to liven up the world. Practically the dark ages, this world was centered on survival, and Godric was somewhat sick of it. To himself, Harry amused the thought that Godric was a true man built intimately for the Renaissance period.

Harry had long ago come to the conclusion that time could not be changed. But he let them come to the conclusion on their own, as a way of growing up, and he would help make some of the situations for them, like ideas.

In the mean time, while his four latest apprentices were thinking up their brain child, he had some ideas. He had never been to Hogwarts, so he didn't know exactly what it was like. But he had heard plenty of stories. He knew that the walls were grey slate stone, smoothe most places. He knew there were pictures on the walls and no real muggle ways in the castle. He knew it was magical in its own way. In his own way, he knew Hogwarts would have to be magical in its on way.

The future could not be changed. All he had to do was create his own wing or whatever that could only be really found by him, and then he would be fine. He had not heard of it from Moony, so if he made it quite memorable, then he knew it wouldn't have been found or Moony would have told him. Finding the place wasn't easy, but he walked right into it.

At the top of a mountain peak there was a large flat plot unclaimed. The trees nearby led into a forest, various others leading around the plot. A large lake was nearby with various creatures inside. It was deeper then it looked he could tell, as there were a family of MerPeople inside, underneath. The tyrant MerKing Godric had defeated, on accident; he had gone swimming, and the angered MerKing had attacked him. Never letting his staff (commissioned by Harry as one of his teaching) away he had swept the tyrant's trident and it had fallen away into the water. Another, younger male Merman had picked it up, formally claiming himself MerKing and killing off the previous tyrannical MerKing.

From the shade of a tree, his friends and fellow pupils had watched this in shock. Shadyn laughed it off. It could only be Godric that would earn his first knightly honor on accident.

Rowena's library had been small, consisting of only the books she had been allowed to buy and had brought along with her. Using some magic in a bag, she could hold hundreds of books by the time she was thirteen. Shadyn took it upon himself to collect any token books or scrolls he found for her mind. There always seemed to be a book under her left arm. It was a running joke that there was always one under her pillow so that she would dream the knowledge.

Occasionally, she truly would dream the knowledge in the book, her seer powers coming through in that way. She would have little prophecy moments in which she was forced to either say or hear little bits at random times that would come true in some way. She would only see them when she was asleep or she had her eyes closed when it started.

Helga, he didn't doubt would be a wonderful mother, practically squeezing the life out of any poor creature she came by. An amusing thought that flitted through his minds eye was that she would hug a large cat and be scratched for it, forgiving it as it happened. Her red hair was quite shiny, and greatly reminded him of his friends so long ago. But those thoughts were banished to the back of his mind like how much he was missing his feral kin.

The ideas developed on with Harry just manipulating parts of the fabric while the others thought it up. By the time they were all ambitious in their endeavor, they knew what they needed to about him, just about everything really. They knew he was missing his animal kin, an idea that baffled the minds of geniuses. Eventually, it brought up an idea about changing forms. Rowena could manage to change her form into that of other humans. Although her other three fellow pupils could do animals as well as herself, they could only manage the basics of human transformations, meaning Helga was pleased to be zit-free.

It took them years to get most of the plans mostly sorted out, and by then they were in their early eighteenth and nineteenth years, except for Hadyn of course. Shadyn had put plenty of his own ideas and machinations into it. His current students were aware that he knew how some of this would turn out, but they respected the fact that he wouldn't tell, as it wouldn't be right for them to do things without the powers of their will and sense of adventure. After a lecture from Rowena over the fact that it was better to not know, he went on a hunt and came back a day later with cuts that Harry had to heal.

A year passed by, and their camp that felt like it was becoming permanent was constantly updated with what they needed or desired. Harry's magic fascinated the others, though he'd never really tell them some things about it. He didn't like being under any limelight really, and he refused to be studied like a lab rat. It had been one of the few times that Rowena Ravenclaw had backed down. The sky was only slightly cloudy when they started laying the basic wards that would consist of the perimeter of the school. It was almost a mile into the actual forest as well. A full six days laying them down on top of one another in a complex formation using all six of their magics was quite difficult. Although Hadyn only required about eight hours of sleep in a whole week, his magic was tiring, and the actual practice swapped him of energy, though his actual magic was still mostly fine, though lower than normal.

They all slept when this was finished, and because the Zs were being sneezed in the sleep, none of them had the chance to see the wards almost solidify and warp their ways. It thickened from a slightly yellow see-through rounded wall into a black mist that somehow managed to look thick even though it was more like fog in that it actually didn't end at one direct spot, but flickered around in power, constantly checking rolls of power and whatever it was that went on in the section that was protected.

Though none would have been able to see it even if they were not asleep, the sectioned off areas literally filled with the shadows of magic and the moon and it sunk into the ground growing roots almost as a tree does but its work went faster, as far in a minute as three hundred years of tree growth that takes place on average. The more 'roots' it grew the faster it moved and the farther it spread, farther then the wards were originally lain. Although the laid out wards were pounded into the framework at certain points, the magic leaked for protection much farther then was originally counted on.

When Shadyn Greene awoke after three days, finally rested but eager to move his muscles, the power of the land was reverberating in his core work and he nearly passed out when he entered the stream. Being surrounded by the liquid full of the wild magic much like his own was a shock to his system. As he was too far into the frozen bodily system, the water literally waded him to shore and set him down with the higher waves that reached to give him room.

He awoke a few hours later with a pounding headache not unlike his brain pains from the evolutionary process that he had gone through with his kin. He felt like hurling and he was seeing quadruple of normal. He awoke his students with some directions and then went back to sleep. It wasn't really true magical exhaustion, but an instability in his magical and inner equilibrium. It was almost as if he had another kin, but instead of human or animal, it was a plot of land magically enhanced and practically cognizant in some inhuman way.

Their maps were ready for infusion in the basic framework and charms so that the building could change and be changed. This place they were building was to be not only a school but a shelter and a sanctuary; a place one of magic or even not of magic could go to escape the binds of slavery. In the future, Harry knew, he could welcomely enter this place and visit without any unlawful workings from the Ministry. With his luck, he'd probably end up setting it up. After all, he had set up Hogwarts, or was anyway.

They started laying bricks, and paying other of various races and jobs to help. There were a few portals leading to faraway places so that the non-humans could get back to their homes after a days' work. It went much faster than expected to say the truth. When they got down the basic foundations, they'd awake to find areas already finished and gone according or even not according to plan. Certain specific runes implanted in the bricks that Harry knew gave them certain 'secret passages' and areas only a few would be able to access, like the work chamber that Slytherin had mapped out in order to protect the school. A basilisk had been his idea in the first place, and then the pipes within the school fit their way around in order to be usable by the giant snake.

Finding such a basilisk as Salazar had wanted was proving quite difficult. There were not many around as it was. Shadyn just ended up finding one and then concluding that it would grow over time in order to seem opposing. Her eyes had been magicked and then re-embedded back in her sockets in order for her to gain the ability to turn the fatal power off and on at will. _Sssessir_ as she liked to be called was an amusing creature, whom Salazar would later bind to himself.

In all, it took a full thirteen months to complete. They had a system already planned for their school in order to give them all a feeling of tournament. It was decided that they'd all just call the houses after their last names, though Shadyn stuck with House Grey. They decided on basic traits to group the students in.

Godric chose red and gold after his hair and eyes. Although he wanted to use a gryphon, (a Gryphon is a lion/snake/winged creature in an ancient royal way while a Griffin is a winged lion with a broader species spectrum to choose from) but instead stuck with a proud lion. Godric favored the traits of chivalry and daring.

Salazar chose the colors of deep emerald green and silver for his own hair and eyes. Many remarked that Salazar could have been Harry's son because of how much they looked alike, though Harry always had preferred short hair to the Slytherin's long. Salazar's mascot was that of a snake, though Salazar would have chosen a basilisk if he had been able to, but Shadyn wanted it kept simply.

Rowena chose the colors white and purple with the animal mascot of the raven, an Arch Raven to be exact; Arch-Raven have the powers of knowledge and when they take flight, they can follow a stream of thought into time. Rowena's own talent as a Seer was a fine point within this-she often sought refuge against trouble and helped her knew family against it. Knowledge and the search was her House intentions.

Helga chose to colors yellow and black, a badger as the mascot. She herself couldn't stand to fly, much preferring simply walking. She had an unnatural ability with dirt and plants. Out of the four founders, she was also the only one with a natural elemental ability, although Godric had a slight like of fire, Rowena with air, and Salazar with water. Shadyn was just too powerful, and found he didn't have much limits in those areas. Even the shadows were under his relative control.

Shadyn's house was different. He had decided to create a 'house' of those that were truly leaders or simply indifferent to everything. His House of Grey was represented by the single colors of blacks, whites and grays. The crest was that of Hogwarts. The rules were quite different then those of the other Houses

For instance, they had more freedom, but they also had more responsibility. Their minds were the sharpest in a good way or the more loyal or trusting or simply people who needed help especially. The House Grey was for those who were somehow apart from the others. They had a team of their own and their own points scale along with it. They had their own common room and dorms, though only the heads of houses and those students of the House Grey would know where or how to get in, never knowing it was an instinctual thing. They could get into their common room from anywhere in the castle just about.

The House of Gray was there to stop fights and mostly intervene and watch for clues on suspicious activity. You could call them spies, but mostly they were a fountain of information on their own, a family. They tended to be those that held the most respective or affecting positions in society, those that would make ripples or help things along. They weren't sheep, to be more direct.

The students came then, twenty four in all, sixteen of them muggleborn. Hadyn took four, Godric six, Rowena five, Helga six, and Salazar five. The new system would take a while to catch on obviously. The children were either very over-independent or very submitting. Hadyn usually had to sit them down. The classes went on well though, and some friends of Harry's took positions while they used time turners to go back and teach multiple classes. If it wasn't for some timing wards on the castle, they would have been aging.

About twenty years passed, and though Hadyn was enjoying his time teaching, he was getting antsy. He needed a change of scenery. It was a matter of luck that while he was teaching a first year portions class of all twenty 11-year-olds, some kid messed up his ingredients somehow, and the children ran to the Hufflepuff head. She came back to find a baby Hadyn standing up as a young boy and staring in shock at the older-looking woman.

She laughed in his face.

He could talk mostly but he couldn't form back, so he decided to alter his appearance a little and go as the younger brother to the House of Grey. Of course, Hadyn Greene had to disappear, and he went as Shadyll Greene. His green AK eyes and shaggy black hair were not changed but he altered his face just a bit to prove a difference. His changing skills were still unexplained, but he did have lighter bones that provided a flexible inner self thanks to bits he got off of his beloved Hedwig.

A sphinx had decided to become a companion of him. Tannis was a purple bird-like creature. She was beautiful and clever and oh-so friendly, but he wouldn't bond with her all the way, and after hearing his reasoning she was sorry to have asked. Instead, he would later place her changed self in place to watch the school after they were all gone.

He was immediately sorted into his own house after the sorting hat burst out laughing, and he made quick friends. He spun a tale of his brother and himself ever since his parents had died. But he didn't give himself away. He grew normally for the seven years of schooling until he reached his eighteenth birthday where he immediately passed out and reverted to normal. Shadyn returned then, and a time turner allowed both of them to be seen.

Again though, Shadyn was getting antsy. He told the others to be ready if he disappeared randomly and never saw them again, but left a portrait of himself in a form that looked unlike him. And like he had thought would happen, he started spinning again.

Only this time, he recognized where he was.

* * *

Trees in the forest were tall, but he was used to much taller greenery and he felt odd in his own skin. He was millennia plus many a millennia old but this place was his original time. It hadn't been his home for a long time though. He contemplated what he was going to tell to his Uncle Moony. The thoughts of his parents came into his mind and he couldn't remember the last time he had though of his twin, Jamien Heraldo.

He made his way back to the room he had long ago called his own and pulled out a pensive, immediately putting in a speck of his memories and replaying them in third person view. He needed to remember what his life had been like, and the specifics. As he recalled the velvety details and different characters, he began assimilating himself back into the life that had stopped being his but would become his own again.

He'd talk to his Uncle Moony about it in the morning when his parents left to spoil his brother again. He could see the Council of Animalia the following night.

* * *

The kitchen buzzer bellowed its smell and his feet got up of their own accord. His mind might have been used to these varying senses and things, but his feet didn't seem to notice quite yet. He went along with the morning schedule the house elves had set up for him.

Walking down the ebony-laced staircase, his feet were silent as usual. It was almost seven in the morning and he could hear his mother cooking a family breakfast, as she preferred to do many things the muggle way, that he would never taste. Some part of him was sad that they would never think of him, but he had grown long used to it and passed many years without the smell or this house on Godric's land.

To himself, he snorted. If this was his home, then he was distantly descended from at least two of the four students he had taken pride in and helped build Hogwarts.

He met two of the Potter house elves in the kitchen. It was unusual for most, he knew, to actually eat or act normally in wizards' presence. But he had long adapted himself to the ways of multiple other races even before he fell into another time.

Changing his walk slightly smiling at them, he took his seat and piled on a bunch of food to fill his stomach. "Morning Gingy, Menow."

"Morning Shadyn," they greeted in their own language. When he was alone, he could be easily greeted by his name given by the council. It felt like a first name while Hadyn became a nickname, not that his parents ever witnessed him doing anything. It was rare if they saw them more than six times a week really.

Eggs, bacon, and jellied warm honey buns were eaten quickly without making too much of a mess, and Shadyn retained his Occlumency shields. Sure, he trusted the house elves, but he wanted to tell Moony first, and then the Council together.

He said goodbye as the elves made sure to clean up his mess despite his protests as usual, and he could smell the food his mother had made. Sure, it didn't smell too appetizing compared to what the house elves made, but there was something in the home cooking of a parent that just called to him, he who had lived many years in the past times enough to fill that of Nicholas Flamel's own many times over. The nostalgia washed over him and he exited the house into the forest before it would get to him.

He needed to practice his own powers to see what he was still able to do.

By the time his Uncle Moony got on the premises of Godric's Hollow, he was pretty sure his powers hadn't lessened any. They were a bit rusty, having fallen into his old ways, but they were there and eager to learn further and be used.

It had been immediate that his 'uncle' had noticed something off. When asked, Hadyn just sighed and finished his meal. While they went for a walk, the old yet young man told the werewolf about what happened. Astonished, Moony insisted that the Council not know right away. Laughing, Harry told him that he wouldn't tell them until he knew what to say.

* * *

Okay, that was the end of Harry's adventure. If I continue this, which I don't know if I will, then it will probably be another DITD. Originally, I wanted this to be a chapter fic, and I figured this was the first few. However, it has been sitting on my computer for a LONG TIME and I haven't added anything to it. So, I'm going to get rid of it.


	16. Neverland Has Come To Hogwarts

**Title:**

Neverland Has Come to Hogwarts

**Disclaimer:**

I don't own Harry Potter or Peter Pan. I am just using their basic frameworks with my creative hypothetical license.

**Cannon:  
**This is a Harry Potter/Peter Pan fic.

**Pairings:**  
Harry/?, Peter Pan/Tiger Lily, RL/SB, LE/JP, etc.

**Genre:  
**Adventure/Fantasy.

**Timeline:  
**Very AU. Pre and Post the Harry's first Halloween, and the actual storyline of Peter Pan.

**Warnings:**  
There will definitely be some AU bits. Bad language and magics that don't actually exist may apply. Also, I am planning a special scene that is very… probably not gonna happen…

**Summary:  
**What if a faerie found two children? What if her magic misplaced her time? What if she raised them? What if the Lost Boys had had another mother before Wendy came along? What if… after the bulk of the Lost boys had been adopted, Hogwarts sent out many a letters.

* * *

DITD: Neverland Has Come To Hogwarts  
Characters: Harry Potter, Peter Pan, Tinkerbelle, etc...  
Author's Notes: I had a bunch planned out but this has been here for a long time and nothing has gotten done with it. Enjoy the DITD.

* * *

There is a young baby boy in a crib, old fashioned and grey in the stormy night as it is. There is a man and a woman pushing his crib, his loving parents. They stop to kiss beneath a falling star in the bright full moon that still shows beneath the clouds that wish to pour.

Shaky, the falling star moves in many directions but they are too wrapped up in their kisses to pay it attention as the clouds can throw the light off. There is no question to why they are out, as they will take a walk quite often and there is no rain yet to stop them.

They don't notice the wheeled cradle fall down the hill they are on. There is traffic below, cars zooming passed and the falling star is zooming in all different directions that no one has stopped to notice. You see the baby's parents were in love, and as such, believed in magic. And that star zooming passed that had distracted the parents (there is a slight bell in their ears for the flying stone) and caused the baby's life to change… it wasn't really a star.

The clouds causing her magic to radiate wild, the wind blowing her southward. She fell straight into a moving object. It wasn't a car. And when the little brunette fairy stopped to notice, failing to stand up, all she found was a crying baby zooming passed metal lights sure to kill him. With her bits of self preservation, she closed her eyes and sprinkled fairy dust on the baby with her wings, a final bell call disappearing.

Wishing to be away, she was, and the small baby with her. The cradle went on into traffic and managed not to be hit by the cars. It stopped on the sidewalk, but when the parents came running down to claim the tiny baby, there was no blue blanket or breathing infant to be found. And that's all there was to be known about the boy. No reports would turn up. No child of his description would be found.

**

* * *

**

With her quiet twinkle of fairy magic, her spirit disappeared from the moving crib, but was instead blasted away by… something. What it was she didn't know but it hurt. She cursed unfairy-like and made sure to protect the baby. With a daunting shock she opened her eyes and something seemed to happen.

She found green, fields of it like the grasses in Neverland in the spring and summer. Green like the color the leaves wish to be. Green like the magic spiraling towards them. She saw red, red like the color of dark hissing eyes. Red like the color of fire before it turns blue. Red like the hair, the hair of Lily-tiger. (_Tiger mum the boys had called her_.) The red-eyed green surrounded the green-eyes and the brunette fairy had no warning.

She wished it wouldn't.

But the wishing could only handle so much. The young woman not more than two times eleven _(Two times eleven is not Two hundred and eleven!)_ knew this. She looked right into the blue eyes of a shocked fairy and spread a wish through her lips, "I'll trade my life for his." Within less than a second she closed her eyes then and wished it twice more. "I trade my life for his, I trade my life for his." _(I Trade my life for his-Harry, my son.)_ And magic worked her charm.

The green light as the mother's eyes sped towards the two children and two woman, (_one is a witch with a wish on her lips)_ though he did not see the two newcomers. The last breath of a young mother came and went as her living baby screamed a loud scream. The green hit her fairy wings and all she could think of was to protect the baby _(save the babies)_ and with that thought she did.

She might have been a wishing fairy but she still wasn't a god and the killing curse (Step aside girl, Avada Kedavra) didn't just kill humans. (Her wishing magic could save the baby that the dark one didn't yet see but it wouldn't save her.) She couldn't think of herself at this moment though. She just wanted to save this baby as the other mother had saved her own. (She clicks her heals three times, "There's no place like home, there's no place like home, there's no place like home!")

And the green light hits her.

But magic notices the potential.

The fairy might not know who these babies are but when she saved one twice within less than a few seconds the rules that the magical should not interfere with the nonmagical do not comprehend.

The fairy doesn't know that there is a prophecy an old man is counting on like it is words from a prophet himself (A batty lady in a bar is overheard by an old man and a bitter serpent, "those that thrice defied him") is being warped by the storm-it caused her to swerve and hit a boy who should be dead only to remind a mother of the possibilities.

The fairy doesn't know that this boy she hasn't yet seen has a magic of his own called wizardry. But he also has an expectation and a twisting of a prophecy to turn. The bond with his mother has just fled and he is in pain so he latched on to the only _(Mother, Mother,)_ closest recipient he can and comes across this other dying lady he couldn't save.

The wishing magic has done its job. But the fairy magic is waning (_no more bells to sound with a wish and a jingle_) and the wish on the boy she saved from a runaway cradle is already warping channels. He feels a bond pulling for (_Mother, Mother_!) the nearest recipient and follows, latching on at the same time.

Before the green light can stop there is a back lash (fierce limbs of an octopus searching for the last meal of a crew taking it below the ocean) and the figure with deep red malice eyes cannot see what has happened, can only see his own curse falling back towards him.

He is bewildered. Fear is there. He cannot move. Cannot dodge-there is not room enough. In the wake of his own curse, he is dead, but all of the spell was not present any longer, having been fractioned off on the death of a mother (_green on red closing forever_) and had been wrapped around and thrown at the other, (_red by green_) darker individual.

The body of a man with broken glasses laying five feet from him is downstairs. His wife, the mother of his child is up in the nursery, having not been able to use the port key past the wards going down all around the house. His son ("_You look just like him"_) with his wife's eyes (_Green as Neverland fields. Green as the Killing Curse_,) is nowhere to be found in the rubble by the best friends who have come running.

They find two bodies and a pile of ash.

Like the first fairy-found baby, there is not trace of him. Like the first fairy-found baby, it is a tragedy. Unlike the first fairy-found baby, he can remember his loving parents and extended family.

The new bond has allowed the little brunette fairy (_Mother, mother, mother_!) to go back to her home in her own time, long ways a way from the destroyed battlefield.

**

* * *

**

This time she lands in a field that is so familiar. It is dark out even here and the stars twinkle until they see her, causing the fact that they were not stars, but fairies far away to become evident. The sky here is not black, but holds the ripples of water. It is not only black and sometimes reflects the twinkle of the fairies. Coming together in one worried huddle temporarily gives the sky the look of another moon.

The other fairies don't know what to say, but see their tired sister and two human babies wrapped in blue blankets. They take them to the Fairy council and ask the judge what to do. After a thorough examination and a basic overview, they determine that the babies have adopted themselves into the clan, and as her children, this young brunette fairy has to take care of them, as new mothers do as their first trial.

As her coming-of-motherhood comes to a near, she falls from her young high stool and is able for a new name. She chooses carefully as she hadn't really liked being called the name her mother had been given for her.

With her last words until her children can understand, she gives her name, and Tinkerbelle flies away with two bundles (_a stork going to her own nest_) honestly having no idea what it is she has to do. Passing birds and Indians can help her.

Years pass, and the boys grow much slower than normal children. They are toddlers when they should be twenty. Tinkerbelle doesn't mind-revels in it in fact. She had only been sixteen, four in human years, and was now beginning to stop aging as all fairies did a few years after motherhood. She did not let this bug her.

The boys had been raised as brothers, and as they were both bonded to her, they were her boys. Blood bonded before they were (_humanly_) five years old, they were brothers in blood as well, though their similar looks had just been coincidence. After the bonding, Harry's hair had been a little less resembling a tangle of vines, and Peter's eyes were a little more emerald than the hazel, now a matching green to his twin brother.

They grew to eleven years old.

And then they stopped aging.

They didn't need fairy wings or fairy dust to fly. The magic had just rubbed off on them.

There mother took them out to the human cities to learn. They wouldn't be growing up, but there were some things they needed to learn without magic. Plus, they often needed bribes for the natives.

Tinkerbelle groaned when Peter brought home the first crying bundle.

And then another. And a third, and then two on the fourth occasion. She was just happy it wasn't triplets on the fifth time. It was then and there she told them they wouldn't be going to the city anymore.

Because these six other young boys taken after seven-day disappearances were not her children, she didn't have to claim them. Knowing they would be jealous though, she had Harry and Peter (sadly) quit calling her "Mother." Though the other boys knew, they looked up to the Pan twins and saw the odd fairy more of an aunt, and the twin leaders who didn't need magic to fly as their fathers.

They all grew differently, off timed before finally they stopped. There was Toodles, who was tiny but quick to defend; the brave and tall Nibs who the wolverines seemed to see as the next meal; there was average size and knowing Slightly who thought himself knowing everything; there were Twin One and Twin Two, who didn't know one from the other and never bothered figuring it out even though one was a boy and one a girl; last, there was Curly who was stuck to look about seven years old. Curly ends up ending up in trouble quite often, but as the youngest of the lots, it wasn't really his fault.

In Neverland, magic was known to everyone. In Neverland, children didn't grow up. In Neverland there was the famously rogue Lost Boys numbering eight. In Neverland, the main protagonists were pirates who didn't age any longer, and never died, though they were mostly defeated.

Other inhabitants of the forest ridden land were a large tribe of Indians, mermaids, and of course, fairies. There were others of course, but these were the only ones having any real part in the story.

**

* * *

**

_My boys love to prank_. That's what Tinkerbelle thinks when she wakes up just to be covered in pie or dung by a slingshot every morning when she can't get high enough.

_All of the Lost Boys like to prank_. That's what Tinkerbelle thinks when she gets up only to be draped in slime from the morning dew triggered by her exit.

_It's a good thing I know how to arrange payback_. This is what Harry and Peter's mother thinks when she arranges a morning change of food for the boys to quench themselves on. Instead of fudge and ice cream, it might be lime pie (_the boys hate limes_) instead of lemon and apple, or maybe it's all-out payback where they get nasty vegetables like tomatoes and carrots.

Or maybe she'll trigger a trap for the boys to individually fall into water when they're not ready.

It's all in good fun though, because in Neverland they're only children forever. But they still have to get around. They have to build multiple tree houses and arrange traps for lumbering pirates when they come around.

Speaking with animals is easy to do for the Pan boys who are surrounded by Fairy magic. It had been years before they realized it wasn't normal, and that it had been Tink's magic that had given them the ability. They could talk to any living creature, excluding ninety-eight percent of the plants.

When her sons should have been thirty something, she had their auras traced and found that both had magic that wasn't just from her. They were wizards. The magic from her bond with them warped it and apparently, they had almost no limits. The fairy wish magic in their veins had combined with their wizard powers and created what she referred to as want and need magic. It wasn't so much they got everything, but when they were in trouble or needed to carry something, their magic would help them.

And they didn't even know it.

She wouldn't tell them though, telling herself they would have their heads explode with the possibilities. But honestly, she feared they wouldn't need her anymore. Though she was wrong, she didn't believe that they wouldn't leave her if they could as all children did. They wouldn't grow up and needed their mother to stay that way.

More years passed, and as their lives went on in the same forms with more pranks and fun and traps to go around, she found herself lacking new stories. The boys were fine with hearing stories they hadn't heard the night before, but she had begun seeking help from others for information.

She decided to look for more tales and knew the only way was to find a story book. But how to find one… Who would have one? Young children of course, old enough to be read to but young enough to believe in fairy tales for a while to come. She asked a favor of a friend to pick one random house with a young child, sneak through the window, and claim a book of fairy tales…

She looked skyward when she noticed her friend carrying a girl in what looked like a swing. Tink's friend quickly said goodbye furiously after telling her the girl had tricked her into coming to look after her favorite book.

But when she came closer, the fairy gaped. All she saw was red hair (not red eyes) and green-as-Neverland-fields (Avada Kedavra) eyes… eyes that looked so much like her eldest twin son's…


End file.
